Civilian Slaughter

The Zone #8

by James Rouch

A NEW BREED OF SUPER-WARRIOR WAGING THE WAR OF THE FUTURE-WITH SURVIVAL AS THE ONLY PRIZE! The Zone-a strip of Western Europe where armies have faced each other and fought their wars for centuries past. It has become the devil's playground for the super-weapons and super-warriors of the future. Blasted to a likeness of Hell itself, barren, desolate beyond description, ridden by disease and stinking of death, here opposing forces seek each other out in a deadly, never-ending game of cat-and-mouse. A shaky truce has been called. Major Revell's Special Combat Company, misfits and mavericks accustomed to fierce front-line action, is assigned mundane behind-the-lines duties. But their interest-and their anger-are aroused when a series of mass graves is discovered. Civilians are being slaughtered by the KGB battalion facing the SCC position. Revell's reports are ignored. HQ threatens to disband the SCC if the matter is pressed. So Revell and his fighting band of misfits take matters into their own hands, waging merciless war on the perpetrators of the atrocities and adding new devastation to the nightmare landscape called... THE ZONE.

Genres: Fiction, Adventure

219 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published April 1, 1989

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Civilian Slaughter is the eighth novel in The Zone series. The first five were published in Great Britain in 1981-'82, then reprinted in the U.S. by Zebra with "Men's Adventure" printed on the spine as the genre category. Zebra continued the series with another four books, and apparently a tenth volume was released by an electronic-only publisher in 2007. The books are set in Europe during a ground war between NATO forces and Russia in a wasteland that's been repeatedly blasted by atomic, biological, and chemical weapons. In this one, Major Revell's company uncovers a mass grave of West German civilians just as a cease-fire is scheduled to begin. They identify the culprits as the worst-of-the-worst Russian war criminals and resolve to wipe out the bad guys despite the truce. All of the soldiers are male save one kind of psycho-killer named Andrea; all of the rest of the females are prostitutes or occasionally nurses. (Hence the men's adventure label.) Despite the future-setting, there's not much of science fiction feel to the book; the war technology isn't much different from WWII. (For example, a mobile dark room is provided to develop the pictures of the murdered civilians that are to prove the atrocity happened.) The Allied command tries to suppress the discovery in order to preserve the cease fire, so Revell is pretty much on his own. It's a competently done adventure and reads more like a shoot-'em-up video game narrative than anything else. It's not good literature but is exactly what it set out and is supposed to be.

[Paschalis]

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