World Wrestling Entertainment chairman and paralegal connoisseur Vince McMahon is recruited into the NSA along with a team of top grapplers - John Cena, Triple H, Batista, Torrie Wilson, and Chavo Guerrero - to take down a big-time meth lab whose funds are being used to finance terrorist activities. I swear this is a real plot for a real book and I am not under the influence of any narcotics as I type this.
Books like Big Apple Takedown are one of the reasons I started doing these reviews in the first place. Because why, oh why, does this book even exist? Who exactly had the bright idea that a spy novel featuring a crack team of pro wrestlers carrying out Mission: Impossible style antics would have any kind of audience? It's not exactly written for youngsters because have you seen Torrie Wilson's tits emblazoned across the front cover? And it's not exactly written for a sophisticated adult audience because did you just read the above plot synopsis?
As far as the cast, we have Vince McMahon as the M character giving out the mission. Triple H is sort of the main Ethan Hunt type character. John Cena is the undercover guy. Torrie Wilson is the distracting eye candy. Batista is the rookie agent. And Chavo Guerrero is the Q man-in-the-van style tech expert. Because, as we all know, Chavo is an avid gamer. Right? Remember that particular piece of knowledge popping up on Monday Night Raw every week??? The wrestlers not having anything close to either their real-life personalities or their wrestling characters' personalities tells me the author has likely never actually watched a wrestling match in his life.
The problem here is with an absolutely absurd set-up like this, Big Apple Takedown should be a glorious so-bad-it's-good dumpster fire. The premise of a bunch of wrestlers embarking on an undercover superspy career has amazing potential for a cheesy good time. Instead we have this incredibly bland and generic romp that just kind of meanders for a while, gives us a few tepid action scenes, makes us cringe with bad dialogue, and then it's over. If I was author Rudy Josephs (who I refuse to believe is a real person), I would be ashamed of myself for failing to deliver any decent fight scenes in a novel starring pro wrestlers as your protagonists. It's kind of implied in what they do for a living that they should be good at fighting, no? We should be getting the literary equivalent of "Rowdy" Roddy Piper's fight scene in They Live with this many beefy men featured as main characters.
Perhaps the only highlight of Big Apple Takedown is a cameo towards the end where "Stone Cold" Steve Austin shows up, whoops some ass, and leaves. But it just makes me think we could have had a much better spy novel with Stone Cold as secret agent 3:16. It'd be even better if it was written by Steve Austin too.
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