David's Reviews > Zorro's Exploits

I finished reading “Zorro’s Exploits” (Bold Venture Press, 2022, edited by Audrey Parente) last week.

I read the first half from September to November 2022, then took a break before reading the second half between January and the first week of February 2023. (My individual story reviews are more detailed on the first half.)

First we get two introductions (one by journalist Jan Zabiński and the other by noted Disney television historian, Bill Cotter).

“The Alcalde’s Last Try” by Tekla Cichocka (illustrations by Sora Almasy). The only story in the book taking place in the 1990-1993 New World/Family Channel television series continuity (despite the front cover featuring this version of Zorro, as played by Duncan Regehr). Following soon after where the tv series left off. Alcalde Ignacio de Soto faces arrest and possibly execution for killing the Spanish king’s emissary (on the tv final episode). De Soto’s desperate last scheme to save himself is to force tavern keeper, Victoria Escalante (known to be Zorro’s love) to marry someone by the following day or lose her tavern, in hopes of drawing Zorro into a trap (hoping that capturing Zorro will outweigh everything else). Don Diego steps in to foil de Soto’s plans.

“Courage by Firelight” by Aaron Rosenberg (illustrations by Steve Shipley). Poor farmers and peasants in the tavern are stirred to stand up for themselves by a stirring story of one of Zorro’s exploits by a mysterious friar.

“Fray Felipe’s Dilemma” by Michael Kurland (illustrations by Steve Shipley). Fray Felipe knows of a plot by some pueblo officials that he can’t reveal the details of but tells Don Diego and Don Alejandro Vega enough to set Zorro out to foil the plot. (In this story Don Alejandro knows his son is Zorro.)

“A Fox in the City” by Jim Beard (illustrations by Perego). Probably my favorite of the stories in the first half of the book. Don Diego and his father (who does not know his son is Zorro in this tale) are both visiting New York City for the inauguration of the United States first President under their new Constitution, George Washington. Diego discovers a plot to kill Washington, forcing him to assume his role of Zorro far from home.

“Out of the Night” by John L. French (illustrations by Michael Grassia). A beast is first mauling cattle and horses around Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Don Diego has married his love, Lolita, and sworn to her to retire as Zorro. When the beast turns to killing people (and turns out to be a different sort of evil, the supernatural kind), it puts pressure on Diego to go back on his vow. (Don Alejandro knows Diego is Zorro in this story, and also in the next one.)

“The Shepherd” by Susan Kite (illustrations by Rick Celano). Another favorite of mine. A simple tale of an old shepherd who lives in the mountains outside of the pueblo with his young son who makes one of his rare visits to town for supplies on a day that Zorro also makes an appearance. The old shepherd tells Sargent Garcia in the tavern that he once took care of a beautiful black horse that looked exactly like Zorro’s horse, Tornado. The shepherd and son know nothing of Zorro, just that the wealthy don they were watching the horse for years ago came back from schooling in Spain and taken possession again of the horse. The shepherd senses he shouldn’t tell Garcia too much, but, unbeknownst to him, is overheard in the tavern by two greedy men who deduce the truth and plan to use this information to blackmail Zorro.

“Life and Death” by Scott Cranford (illustrations by Phil Latter). A man that the town soldiers all fear due to his fierce reputation attacks Don Diego’s servant, Bernardo, at the tavern, putting him at death’s door. The attack enrages Diego, who immediately confronts the man as Zorro.

“Fox Hunt” by Bobby Nash (illustrations by Phil Latter). Probably my third favorite of the first half of the book. A boisterous and wealthy man from Spain who is a hunter has trained to hunt the most dangerous prey in Spanish California: el Zorro! Announcing his intentions at a party thrown by Don Alejandro (who again in this story does *not* know is his son), Diego decides he must confront this man in his den, a mansion he has bought alongside a deep ravine.

“Los Hombres Buenos” by Patricia Crumpler (illustrations by Aleena Valentine). Two old schoolmates of Diego’s from their years studying in Spain arrives in town just as a group of bandits are raiding the local rancheros. One is now a priest on a special mission for the Monsignor of Madrid, going ahead of a religious relic touring the area.

“M For Murrieta” by Francisco Silva (illustrations also by Francisco Silva). The only story in this collection featuring the Alejandro Murrieta version of Zorro played by Antonio Banderas (and his wife, Elena, played by Catherine Zeta-Jones) in the films “The Mask of Zorro” and “The Legend of Zorro”. The city’s collected taxes are stolen by a bandit said to be Alejandro’s dead brother, Joaquin.

“The Road To Penance” by Ron Fortier (illustrations by Steve Shipley). The local church mission is robbed by bandits and the priest is kidnapped to be held for ransom.

“Zorro and the Red Devil” by Teel James Glenn (illustrations by Francisco Silva). A group of pirates has been raiding the rancheros and settlements along the California coast. They take a group of wealthy land owners (including Don Diego and his father Don Alejandro) hostage. Diego has to get away and then take out the pirates one by one. (I really liked this story.)

“The Gold Bell of Canfield Featherstone” by James Mullaney (illustrations by Francisco Silva). A bell made out of solid gold being donated by a rich plantation owner from Georgia to the local mission becomes a target for every bandit in the area, laying in wait to hijack the carriage secretly carrying it. However, not all is as it seems in regards to the reported “Gold Bell”.

“A Lovely View” by Keith DeCandido (illustrations by Aleena Valentine-Lopez). Vandals hired by a wealthy don harass and pillage an orphanage set up in a mansion along the coast that the don’s wife desires. The don’s pressure prevents Capitan Monastario from stepping in. Zorro most therefore come to the sisters who run the orphanage’s aid.

“A Wolf in the Land” by Don Everett Smith Jr. (illustrations by Michael Grassia). A very good story about Zorro vs. a werewolf that has killed the local doctor and a soldier and threatens to continue killing others in the area. The first encounter between Zorro and the werewolf does not go well.

“The Kindness of Strangers” by Patrick Thomas (illustrations by Rob Davis). Zorro must reach a witness who can clear an innocent man from being executed by the Alcalde. The Alcalde’s soldiers stand between Zorro and the witness.

“Z” by Bret Bouriseau (illustrations also by Bret Bouriseau). Zorro encounters a beautiful seniorita in a carriage being chased by another carriage and about to be driven over a cliff. But, this encounter takes a supernatural turn.

An enjoyable range of stories. In general, I am enjoying the longer stories a bit better than the shorter ones (and, generally speaking, the stories in the second half of the book are a bit better than in the first half).

Some might find it jarring that these stories seem to take place based all on different versions of Zorro, many seemingly based on the original Johnston McCulley pulp stories, others seemingly from the 1957-1959 Disney television series (the Guy Williams version), the aforementioned story featuring the Duncan Regehr and Antonio Banderas versions, etc.

I didn’t really have a problem with this (other than the back and forth about if his father, Don Alejandro, knows his secret or not; ironically, the opening story based on the New World tv series Zorro, which ended with the clear indication that Diego was just about to reveal his secret to his father right as the end credits rolled, does not address whether Alejandro knows or not, focusing entirely on Diego and Victoria instead).

My only real complaint is that this book really needed another proofreading prior to publication. I’ve found the frequent misspellings (and usages of incorrect words) distracting. In one case it happens twice, in two back-to-back sentences (something like “So I would seem ” when it should have said, “So it would seem”, followed by in incorrect use of “too” in the next sentence instead of “to”). In another story Zorro is actually written as “Zero” twice in the middle of a passage.

Easy things to catch if one has enough live “eyes” going over the text prior to printing (and not an over reliance on spell-checking software). But this is a small press outfit, so perhaps Parente didn’t have any editorial assistants to help go over it.

Still, I enjoyed this book and plan to read the other Zorro novels and story collections published by Bold Ventures Press. Short story collections are almost always an uneven experience, and ”Zorro’s Exploits” is no exception. Therefore I ended up giving it three out of five stars on GoodReads (but definitely recommend it to Zorro fans).