"Doomsday Exam" is the second BUREAU 13 book by Nick Pollotta.
Before the X-FILES, before BUFFY THE VAMPIRESLAYER, before MIB, but definitely after GET SMART, is BUREAU 13. This is the federal agency that is so secret no one knows how it is funded. So competent that it tries to hire anyone who has survived a brush with the supernatural. And so funny that only Nick Pollotta could write about it!!
BUREAU 13 was set up by the founding fathers of the US, to serve and protect the country and its citizens from the super- and supra-natural. Their encounters run from the prosaic vampire hunts, werewolf rundowns and djinni bottlings, all the way to mutant, cybernetic slugworms trying to infiltrate the minds of teachers everywhere through the use of phone cards.... ok, I am making that last one up, but it isn't far off the mark! "Doomsday Exam" gives us a look at how the entire Bureau gets threatened when its crack team brings in an 'unkillable' to the super-secret pocket universe that is both the main training facility and ultra holding facility of the Bureau. Needless to say this unkillable is able to not only release many others, but to escape with the most deadly relic on the planet, thus enabling it (or as we find out him) to threaten the world with all sorts of nastiness.... Thus Ed Alvarez's crack team of agents is called upon to track down this being and stop a worldwide disaster!
Ed is our semi-narrator, giving us his gumshoe jaded noir version of events as he sees them. His .357s are his mainstay, but he isn't above using a bottle of holy water, thermite grenade or sucker punch to achieve his ends. Recruited in the first BUREAU 13 book, he again proves to be the stalwart leader of people with diverse backgrounds.
Jessica Alvarez is the team psionic and mind-reader, who was so taken with Ed that they got married at the end of the first novel. While physical violence does make her ill, she isn't beyond toting a taser or shotgun to help out in a pinch... and don't even THINK about pinching her!
George Renault is the automatic weapons toting man of the group, who hasn't met an autocannon he hasn't liked. Always dependable for something that goes bang or boom and one or the worst drivers on the planet, his skills always lend an added bit of flair to events.
Mindy Jennings, a martial artist with an unbreakable mystical sword. Would you like that sliced, diced or just generally chopped into bits?
Michael Xavier Donaher, a Catholic priest that carries a bible in one hand, a shotgun in the other and keeps the holy water in 50 gallon containers. He prefers fish on Friday, vampires staked down and is STILL trying to convert Satan.
Raul, a couple of hundred years old mage of great capability, sagacity and weird T-shirts. Polymorph, teleport, fireball and all sorts of fancy death spells are at his beck and call. Unfortunately magic isn't an anodyne to many of the things the Bureau meets up with...
Tina Blanco, a newly recruited Russian mage who is still learning the ropes of the Bureau while she tries to stay alive during a major crisis. And as is pointed out her assets are more than just magical, they are almost divine!
Ken Sanders, a new recruit who just happens to be the result of a super-soldier serum tested on a gorilla. Strong, handsome, pure beyond a doubt and very happy to be accepted into the primo group protecting the US.
This fine team must deal with an alchemist who steals the nastiest book ever made (making the Necronomicon look like something adolescent demons made during their free time) and the souls of two unkillables along with their skills. If he can't be stopped then its curtains for all of the magic on the planet, the end of free will and the beginning of an eternity of torment to the designs of a mild-mannered bookkeeper on the ultimate power trip.
"Doomsday Exam" is fast paced, fun to read and quite, quite silly. BUREAU 13 was originally commissioned by the TSR company to exemplify the TOP SECRET role-playing game. Nick Pollotta asked if he could bend the rules a bit, and came out with his classic series of BUREAU 13 books, which required TSR to revamp TOP SECRET from top to bottom. His books hit just about every cliche from at least four genres (film noir, horror, science fiction and fantasy) puts it in a modern setting, and then lets it all loose on the unsuspecting reader. Like many comical novels in the SF realm, Mr. Pollotta gets away with light characterizations and portrayals and goes heavily into ironic and comedic situations, comedic banter and as much as action as he can reasonably pack into 202 pages.
The writing style is fluid, energetic and suits the material well, and can be easily compared to the writing of the late Keith Laumer in his RETIEF series. And even though there are RETIEFian sorts of situations and events in "Doomsday Exam", this due more to the similar setups of bureaucratic undercover operations than anything else. Mr. Pollotta's situations and characters are all of his own design and work within the logical (or illogical) framework of the world he sets up for them. Thus the reader is treated to a fun and action packed book that doesn't take its material too seriously, until it gets very serious... at which point it stays serious for a page or two and then goes back to its normal mode of operations.
All three books in this series are being reprinted somewhere...
Want fun reading in the SF field? Try out any of the RETIEF books by Keith Laumer, with "The Pangalactic Pageant of Pulchritude" being one of many favorites. Of course any of the HOKA books by the late masters of the genre Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson are well worth pulling up for a fun and light-hearted read.
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