The Magnum enforcer turns
terror back on the terrorists!

Plot

The Blood of Strangers
(Dec 1982)

"You wanna know why they call him Dirty Harry, you watch."

Dirty Harry- Breaking his rules and making his own!  Terrorists!  Airports and public places are their stage.  Civilians are their targets.  The spread of chaos is their game.  Now Dirty Harry wants to play- for keeps.  On battlefields from Frisco to Beirut to El Salvador, in the company of a beautiful T.V. newswoman, he leaves a trail of hot blood and bullets as he searches beyond the Libyan connection for the source of this savagery.  Dirty Harry- breaking every law to get the criminals, making his law to fit the crime.

6 Shots, Or Only 5?
* 1/2

As the title points out, it's the blood of strangers, and unfortunately, it really is.  We never learn anything about who Harry is up against than a few generic names, and no one ever reveals any kind of motivation for anything they are doing.  It also doesn't help to have settings like Beirut and El Salvador that stick Harry in the midst of foreign wars and give him nothing to do but kill people.

One of the only notable things here is Harry's involvement with a female TV reporter, that is reminiscent of his similar love interest in The Dead Pool.  Unfortunately, this gets Harry into one of the most ridiculous action sequences in the book.  After her station is taken hostage, Harry must infiltrate it using tiny explosives to open locked doors, and slitting the captors' throats.

But it doesn't end there.  The final chapter goes a step further after the case has been wrapped up.  Harry takes some time off and turns hitman, when he flies to a villa in Rome in order to kill the remaining crime boss.

Name Games
The previous book is listed as Dirty Harry #9:  The Underground.

The Symbionese Liberation Front, the real-life inspiration for the terrorists in The Enforcer, is briefly mentioned, although it is nothing more than a name-drop.