scorpion

So I found the original Scorpion from 25 years ago, using my library's inter-library loan system. This one was written in the mid 80s, by a much younger looking Andrew Kaplan. The short story: the franchise appears to be built on pretty solid ground.

Scorpion had a lot of things that I hoped that it would: origin story--including where the name Scorpion comes from--how the Scorpion grew up, and how he ended up where he is. Also, a pretty damn good intrigue story.

I was also happy to find that going back and reading the original story after I've read two of the modern 'sequels' was no problem at all; each of the novels stands on its own pretty well.

There seem to be some slight differences between the modern stories and the original, not least of which are the dates associated with the characters. If our guy was in his 30s twenty-five years ago,  he'd be pretty close to 60 now--he isn't. Other things are more subtle. In the original book he seems to be referred to as 'the' Scorpion; I believe he's just Scorpion now.

Like with a lot of stories in this genre, the bad guys are over-the-top-evil, and the women are so fine you want to weep. There must be a big box of these characters that authors can shake them out of and into their stories, like dried herbs into a nice novel sauce. ah, well

Its fun, fast and entertaining, and doesn't need to be read in order!