Although Al Hubin has cast a very wide net in putting together Crime Fiction IV, he still hasn’t caught everything. Once in a while I come across a book that seems crime-related enough that it ought to be included, and it isn’t, or not yet.

   The latest of these rare instances is the following author and title, which will appear shortly in Part 18 of the Addenda to the Revised edition of CFIV:

Guerrilla Game      PADDEN, IAN.
         Guerrilla Game. Bantam, pbo, June 1987.

      From the front cover:

    “In the California desert, one man wages a fierce war for more than survival … justice.”

         From the back cover:

      IT STARTED AS A WAR GAME …

on a mock battlefield in the California desert — until the “enemy” started firing live ammunition and a young trainee wound up dead,

      IT ENDED IN MURDER.

Captain Ronald Cochrane of U.S. Special Forces knew the attack wasn’t an accident. Alone, he was going back to the desert to prove that Carl Nathan was murdered in cold blood … even if he had to risk a court martial to do it. What Cochrane didn’t know was that he was already a man marked for death … the target of a powerful military underworld and a corrupt superior who was setting him up for the ultimate double-cross.

      NOW IT WAS A ONE MAN WAR.

For Cochrane, the game was over and the real war is about to begin. And he will need every commando trick in the book to survive …

                  GUERRILLA GAME.

   Ian Padden is also the author of a series of non-fiction “The Fighting Elite” books on the military. One of these is shown, The Fighting Elite: U.S. Airborne: From Boot Camp to the Battle Zones:

The Fighting Elite