Showing posts with label Dell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dell. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 24, 2024

Traveler #10: Hell On Earth


Traveler #10: Hell On Earth, by D.B. Drumm
October, 1986  Dell Books

Ed “D.B. Drumm” Naha takes a page from the Doomsday Warrior series with this tenth installment of Traveler, which turns out to be a literal take on the title: In this one, Traveler actually finds hell on Earth, and ventures down into it like some post-nuke Orpheus to rescue his beloved, Jan. While Hell On Earth starts off with some actual “emotional content” (to quote Bruce Lee), it even gradually takes on the same “R-rated Saturday morning cartoon” vibe as Doomsday Warrior

This is unfortunate, as I was ready to declare Hell On Earth as one of the greatest volumes of Traveler ever (or any post-nuke pulp in general)…for the first twenty or so pages. But as the narrative went on it became clear that Naha was up to his usual tricks, spoofing his own content with lots of bantering and humorous asides – and really the entire setup is straight out of Ryder Stacy, with the titular hell being modelled after a 1980s shopping mall, complete with an escalator that takes one down the nine levels. I kept expecting Ted “Doomsday Warrior” Rockson and team to show up and lend Traveler a hand. 

Of course we know this would be impossible, given that Doomsday Warrior takes place a century after 1989 – one of the few things consistent about that series was the “hundred years after” setting. But friends there’s still a disconnect between Ed Naha and the guys in the office at Dell Books. Because they’ve yet to get their stories straight on when the hell Traveler takes place. The back cover threw me for a loop with its mention that it’s “nearly thirty years after doomsday,” and as we’ll recall the previous volume had back cover copy stating it was twenty-plus years after. 

And when the novel opens, we meet Traveler with a gray beard, living alone outside a pueblo in “the Southwest” and his traveling days apparently long behind him – the indication is clear that it’s a helluva long time since the previous volume. So I was like wow, this really is 30 years after the nuclear war, and Traveler’s basically retired from the, uh, “Traveler” business…but almost immediately after this evocative setup Naha informs us that Traveler is not old, despite looking old, and is only “in his midforties.” And also guess what…it’s only six months since the previous volume, and only three years since the events of #6: Border War! Also we are told, later in the novel, that without question the nuclear war was “two decades ago,” meaning that the novel takes place in 2009. Not 2019, as implied by the back cover. 

This sort of thing irritates me. 

But man, that opening. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess Naha was inspired by Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, which came out in 1985, ie right around when Naha was likely writing Hell On Earth. As with that film, Traveler when we meet him is alone and bitter and it seems much time has passed. And like Mad Max, Traveler here becomes a protector of children…for those first few pages, at least. Frustratingly, Naha has a perfectly fine setup at the start of the novel, but ditches it for the “hell on Earth” scenario…which is ultimately undone by Naha’s penchant for spoofing and mocking his own material. I mean I get it that he feels this sort of shit is beneath him, but still – couldn’t he have kept it to himself and not let his derision spill into the narrative? 

Traveler when we meet him isn’t even “Traveler” anymore (and, we’ll recall, his real name is Kiel Paxton, anyway): he’s now “The Storyteller,” and he’s living here in a shack or something outside of a pueblo that was untouched by the nukes. Naha pulls a double “background story” thing here: first we’re told that “Storyteller” got his name because each morning he tells stories to the mutant children that live in the pueblo. Then shortly after that we have yet another background story, detailing how Traveler got here in the first place: he came across a caravan of youth while he was headed South, six months ago, and sort of lost his mind after witnessing their grim fate – a grim fate Traveler himself unwittingly sent them off to. 

I was more moved than I thought I’d be by the opening of the book, which features “Storyteller” reading a book of nursery rhymes he has recently discovered in the post-nuke rubble; he can’t even get passed “once upon a time” without being hammered with questions by the mutant children, none of whom can grasp a “once upon a time” in which their weren’t mutant children like themselves. Naha pulls a double “rip the reader’s heart out” bang for his buck with the next chapter, in which he flashes back six months to when Traveler met that caravan of youth on their way out of the South; in this nuke-blasted world, they had “chosen to remain kids” instead of becoming the hard-edged survivors required in this new world, and Traveler mindlessly avoided the opportunity to provide them with some much-needed security. 

So the potential was there…Traveler, blaming himself for the death of one group of kids, now a sort of guardian for another group of kids; all kinds of potential for a redemptive storyline here, with roadrats or other post-nuke brigands descending on the pueblo and Traveler fighting to save the kids. But Naha skips this and instead sends Traveler to hell – literally. The surprise return of Link, Traveler’s companion last seen in Border War, sets the narrative wheel in motion. Traveler has assumed Link dead all these years, but here he is, ravaged and near death (for real this time), with a crazy story about having escaped from hell – where he’s been these past three years, along with Jan. 

As we’ll recall, Jan was the American Indian beauty who featured in the installments written by series co-author John Shirley; she and Traveler went off into a post-nuke Happily Ever After in the denoument of Border War, only for Naha to buzzkill that in the opening of #7: The Road Ghost, where we were bluntly informed that Jan had been killed almost immediately after heading off into that Happily Ever After! Naha has seldom referred to Jan since – naturally, given that Jan wasn’t one of the characters he created – but now we are reminded of how Traveler “loved her once.” So, if she’s still out there, off he’ll go, getting the Meat Wagon geared up and heading out. 

Naha has a knack for mystically-attuned guides for Traveler, and Hell On Earth has not one but two of them. First there’s Willy, who acts as the sort of shaman for Traveler/Storyteller, and in one of those typically-inexplicable events of the series was the one who prevented Traveler from killing himself six months ago: after discovering the grim fate of those kids, Traveler attempted to blow his brains out, only for the gun to be knocked out of his hand just as he pulled the trigger – knocked out of his hand by a friggin’ tomahawk! A tomahawk thrown by a punk-haired mystic by the name of Willy, who appeared just at that moment to tell Traveler it “wasn’t his time” to die…and as if that weren’t mystical enough, this dude even called Traveler by his real name, Kiel Paxton. 

But this will be yet more interesting material Naha will cast aside; Willy is soon gone from the text, having givenTraveler some arrows for his crossbow, the blades of which have been treated with Willy’s magical “herb.” Traveler accidentally knicks himself on one of the blades, immediately seeing LSD-style flashes of color; this will be Ed Naha’s way of having his cake and eating it too, with the overhanging possibility that the rest of the novel could be nothing more than the herb-caused hallucinations of Traveler. However Willy’s gone…to almost immediately be replaced by another “mystic guide” type, this one an older gentleman in a robe who insists he is Saint Michael, ie the actual angel himself. 

As we’ll also recall, Naha has no problems with taking Traveler outside of the already-wide boundaries of its internal post-nuke logic: previous installment The Stalking Time featured an alien, complete with spaceship, assisting Traveler. So the actual Saint Michael of the actual Bible appearing here doesn’t seem to out of place. What I found most interesting was reading this from a post-modern perspective; today belief in religion isn’t nearly as commonplace as it was in 1986 (it’s actually no longer the majority religion in England, with the US surely soon to follow), so I wonder how many modern readers would respond to the Biblical and religious overtones Naha sprinkles through Hell On Earth

The problem with this is that these spiritual and mystic guides only serve to lessen Traveler himself. Naha will build up a nice rapport between Saint Michael and Travel, with the “angel” often questioning Traveler’s lack of belief and sort of taunting him that he’s wrong, but at the same time it’s all so frustratingly similar to modern-day drek in which the male protagonist is constantly questioned, criticized, and belittled by a “strong empowered woman” who once upon a time would’ve been nothing more than a damsel in distress. But seriously, I’m not joking – not only does Saint Michael constantly question and criticize Traveler, but he’s always saving him! Indeed, Traveler hardly does anything in Hell On Earth; his bullets will have no affect on the demons and hell-beasts he and Saint Michael go up against. 

Otherwise Saint Michael isn’t that bad of a character; he claims without question he is the angel of myth, and what’s more has two big scars on his back, right where ripped-off wings would’ve gone. But then, he remembers nothing from before the war, so there is the possibility he’s just some guy who had a psychotic break after the collapse of society. Again, Naha wants his cake and to eat it too (and really, who doesn’t??), so throughout the novel he dangles the idea that all this could just be a big trip for Traveler. Regardless, Saint Michael is learned on mythology and the general outline of hell, and for the rest of the narrative will explain this or that to the constantly-befuddled Traveler. 

Again, this is a far cry from the confident and capable ass-kicker of the John Shirley installments. Naha’s Traveler is more prone to self-doubt and, most unforgivably, can’t even save himself, at least this time. Throughout Hell On Earth he totes an HK-91 or Uzi, blasting away, but his bullets don’t do anything, and Saint Michael will show up with a wand or even a bag of holy water to save Traveler’s ass. This is because the stuff Traveler fights this time is straight outta hell, with actual demons and the like walking on the Earth. But even here, Traveler will tell himself they might just be a type of mutant he’s never seen before, or perhaps “hell” was a top-secret genetics research lab before the war, and what’s been unleashed is a man-made hell. 

The caveat here is that these action scenes are more along the lines of a fantasy novel, and nothing like the post-nuke carnage of previous installments. There’s little in the gun-blazing gore one might reasonably expect, with instead Traveler getting his ass handed to him by a pterodactyl-type creature from hell and the like. Even the finale sees Traveler fighting a massive demon. And that’s another thing – Link tells Traveler that “Lucifer” reigns in this hell Link has just escaped, and for no reason Traveler immediately assumes that “Lucifer” is really President Frayling, ie Traveler’s arch-enemy of earlier volumes. The only problem here is that Traveler killed Frayling in Border War…which, again, was written by John Shirley, and for all intents and purposes was a volume that could have easily served as the final isntallment of Traveler

But we aren’t even reminded here that Traveler himself killed Frayling (perhaps Naha forgot, given that Shirley is the one who told us of this incident), and as Hell On Earth proceeds he becomes more and more confident that Lucifer is Frayling. Yes, cue more taunting from Saint Michael, who insists that Lucifer is really Lucifer, ie the devil himself, and that is who they will face in the center of hell. But still, it’s just another indication of how lessened Traveler is, given his muleheaded insistence, apropos of nothing whatsoever, that Frayling is the ruler of this hell, which has sprouted like a radioactive mountain out of the desert. 

The Doomsday Warrior parallels are strong as Traveler and Saint Michael take the escalator down into the shopping mall that is hell, with each level themed along the lines of Dante’s Inferno – the film version of which plays on TV screens on one of the first levels. Another level is given over to red light districts and cathouses (the horror!), and another level has victims lined up to be ground into bloody paste. Also I forgot, there’s a lake at the entrance complete with a Charon at the boat, which gave me bad flashbacks to Clash Of The Titans (truly not a movie that has aged well, but damn I loved it as a seven year old – I even had the toys!  And I recall shooting the Charon figure in the face with a BB gun when I was older for some mysterious reason!). 

You can skip this paragraph due to spoilers, but for those who don’t want to bother with reading the novel, Traveler does indeed find Jan, on the sixth level, but this too is a lessened Jan – she is zombielike, and barely has any dialog. Oh and I forgot, along the way Traveler and Saint Michael also pick up some other young woman, this one named Diana, who claims to be escaping from hell – but like everyone else here, she has no memory of how she even got here. Our heroes even meet a former lawyer turned “samurai for hire” named Patrick Goldsteen – “An Anglo samurai?” thinks a shocked Traveler, but this is just even more indication of Naha’s contempt for his own material. It’s all just spoofed throughout. But anyway, we can see where this is going – Jan, Goldsteen, the other “zombies” Traveler meets…hell even Link in the opening…all of them are dead, and this really is hell, folks, and it’s not President Frayling but the devil himself – a twenty-foot demon in a lake of fire – who runs the place. And once again Saint Michael saves the day while Traveler just stands there. 

Well, end spoilers. Hell On Earth even has a Doomsday Warrior-esque “reset” finale, with Traveler on his way back to the pueblo, wondering if all this has just been a dream courtesy that “herb” Willy spiked his arrows with. Here’s hoping that the next volume will pick up the thread Hell On Earth started off with, instead of detouring into satire and spoofery. 

Oh, and last note on the lameness – Traveler doesn’t even get laid this time. Now if that’s not a shocker I don’t know what is!

Monday, July 10, 2023

The Happy Hooker

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Thursday, June 22, 2023

Sunstop 8


Sunstop 8, by Lou Fisher
January, 1978  Dell Books

Sometimes you come across just the book you’re looking for. Such was the case a few weeks back at the Plano Half Price Books while I was scanning the sci-fi paperback shelf for something to read…something in that ‘70s psychedelic sci-fi vibe I like so much. And something not too pricey…I mean the days of “Half Price Books” actually selling half price books are long gone. But they were running a Memorial Day Sale, with like 25% off or something, so what the heck. 

Anyway, I’m not really a cheap person. It’s just hard for me to accept that books that used to cost less than a dollar at Half Price Books now have sticker prices on them that are at least double the original price, if not more. Anyway, the spine of Sunstop 8 jumped out at me from the shelf and I picked it up; my original thought was that it was a groovy late ‘70s Dell paperback along the lines of Shea and Wilson’s Illuminatus! trilogy (also published by Dell at the time, and a trio of books I was flat-out obsessed with at one point in my life…in fact, perhaps I should read them again, finally after all these years, and post my reviews on here). I think I might’ve seen this book before, maybe at this same Half Price Books store, but this time the moment was right, it looked to be just the pyschedelic ‘70s sci-fi book I wanted – complete with even lame interior illustrations – so I bought it, for the strangely specific price of $2.49 plus 25% off! 

Now it’s only via the ISFDB that I know Louis “Lou” Fisher was a not-very-prolific science fiction author of the time, only publishing two novels, this being the first…and the second one not published until 1986. He also did some short stories and whatnot. While I wasn’t sure at first, as I got several pages into Sunstop 8 I discovered that Fisher’s main influence, at least for this novel, was most likely Ron Goulart. I say “at first” because for the first few pages you don’t realize Sunstop 8 is going to be a somewhat satirical romp through a very 1970s “future,” with more of a comedic overtone than serious. Generally I bail at this – if you’ll note, there isn’t a single review of a Ron Goulart novel on this blog – but something about Sunstop 8 kept me reading. 

For one, the tone isn’t too comedic. Like Goulart, Fisher writes the novel with his tongue clearly in his cheek. But while it is all told spoofily, the events actually matter to the protagonists. Meaning, it isn’t all a big joke. And that’s another thing. The black-and-while illustrations in the book almost look to be taken from a Choose Your Own Adventure novel; they make the book appear to be a juvenile. And indeed, at first I wondered if Sunstop 8 was a juvenile sci-fi novel. But within the first few pages our hero is checking out a hotstuff redhead on vacation planet Sunstop 6, and flipping through some pages I saw a lot of saucy sex talk and even a bit of ‘70s-mandatory rape “humor.” So, this isn’t a book for kids. At least in the 1970s it wouldn’t have been! 

Another thing was that even though I read the back cover and the first-page preview copy, I still couldn’t figure out what the hell Sunstop 8 was about. I had to read the book to find out. And here’s what it’s about: a young bookie named Chet McCory who lives off the Earth on his own swank satellite has come to the planet Sunstop 6 for vacation…and he’s soon abducted by agents of another planet in the system, Sunstop 8. This planet was originally a tourist spot itself, but various wars have resulted in it being a hotbed of intrigue and chaos, and all the civilized planets avoid it – I assumed the whole thing was a Vietnam War metaphor. Well anyway, Chet is kidnapped and taken to Sunstop 8…where he learns that he’s been kidnapped so he can run a global lottery to drum up interest in the ruling party of despot Pawk Lundiner. Why Lundinder and his minions insist on an “Earthman bookie” to run their lottery is a question Fisher is unable to properly answer, but the plot outline should tell you all you need to know about the novel’s tone. 

But man, it’s those “sci-fi ‘70s” topical touches that kept me reading…sort of like contemporary novels The Tomorrow FileColonyMythmaster, or The Savage Report. Actually, one more reference to a previously-reviewed book: a lot of Sunstop 8 is very similar to the material in the anthology Infinity Five, only not as focused on sleaze or kink. That said, this is a pretty kinky book, with a lot of reference to sex and the physical attributes of the female characters, but the sole sex scene in the novel occurs entirely off page. But I figure this is the same vibe as actual Ron Goulart novels…I have several of them, picked up many years ago (at Half Price Books, in fact, when they truly were half off the cover price), like Gadget Man or somesuch, and I recall from my aborted readings of them many years ago that they too were mostly comedic escapades in funky future ‘70s settings, but otherwise rated PG. 

Well anyway, Fisher doesn’t belabor us with a lot of world-building; this isn’t a “hard science” novel by any means. The date is even specious, something like 2076.3 or whatnot, leaving us to wonder if this is some new “stardate” type of nomenclature or if the number after the period just denotes the month. Who knows? I got the impression Fisher didn’t want us to worry over such incidentals. I mean, there’s galactic flight and you can whisk from one corner of the galaxy to the next in almost no time, so again the impression is a little juvenile. About the most we get in the hard science department is a part where Chet’s brawny and dimwitted assistant Rocky tries to call Chet on Sunstop 6 from their satellite outside Earth orbit, and we’re informed it takes 9 minutes each ways for messages to get through. 

As mentioned though, Fisher isn’t so much concerned with the science of things. He has a tale to tell, a goofy tale, and one where I wonder what the origin of the book even was. I mean, Sunstop 8 is the inverse of the old rub that “all first novels are autobiographical.” I mean who in the world would come up with a plot like this? Other than Ron Goulart, that is? But what makes it frustrating is that Fisher doesn’t even exploit his own goofy tale. Chet is “Shanghaied” by some Sunstop 8 agents while vacationing on Sunstop 6, told by the ancient and decrepit ruler of Sunstop 8, Pawk Lundiner, that Chet’s services are needed to run a lottery, and that Chet will be payed handsomely for the deal. Even given a woman of his own. Chet says no…and spends the rest of the friggin’ novel saying no. 

I remember years ago I read Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With A Thousand Faces, or whatever it’s titled, and at the time there were some how-to writing books out there on how you could use that whole idea to plot out your novels. And one of the caveats was that the titular hero could refuse his quest, or watever, but ultimately he would have to undertake it. And also that this decision should happen rather quickly. Certainly this refusal isn’t something that should be going on for a few hundred pages! And yet in Sunstop 8 that is exactly it; Chet says no, he says no again later, he’s captured by other people and still saying no. It gets to be aggravating. 

So the novel starts off with that fun ruggedly virile ‘70s vibe I love so much: Chet is floating in this sort of zero-g sauna on Sunstop 6 and sees this curvy female form floating around him (apparently the “du-metal” outfits worn in such environments obscure the majority of the body), and reflecting how, unlike the spaceship he just disembarked from, she’s “a structure you want to get into. Not out of.” Turns out she’s a hotstuff redhead who works in one of the attactions here and her name’s Avon. She’s not interested in Chet due to the guys who have been shadowing him. She floats off and later Chet is taken captive by those guys, who turn out to be the aforementioned Sunstop 8 agents. 

Through the rest of the novel Fisher will refer to Avon as this sort of blossoming romance for Chet, though Chet hardly spends any narrative time with her. Indeed, Chet’s sole sexual excursion in the novel will be with the slim, petite brunette Sunstop 8 beauty Juell, a gal who has one of the best intros in the book – blasting “the electronic speed-beats of Carter Lee Cash” on a sort of quad-system-of-the-future stereo rig. With her long brown hair, wrapped with a bandana, it’s hard not to see her as a future hippie. Her dialog here is also suitably bizarre; Chet mentions he broke an antique while escaping his Sunstop 8 kidnappers, and Juell replies, “I despise antiques!” 

But man, these weird touches unfortunately fade as Sunstop 8 moves on. There’s action, occasionally, but the problem is Chet comes off as so obstinate that he refuses to move the plot forward. I mean it’s constantly him just saying “no” to this or that, until finally he’s forced into doing it – even then he tries to undo the entire lottery idea, and is put in front of yet another firing squad by Pawk Lundiner. Oh, and the novel’s weirdly structured. Chet says “no” for like the entire book, then finally starts planning the lottery – all while planning also to dismantle it so as to get revenge on Lundiner – then suddenly he’s making yet another escape attempt. Then, later in the novel, we have a random flashback to a few weeks before, when the lottery was running, and Chet’s making his only trip outside of the fortress he's been locked in. And we see how the lottery is advertised by sexy women (everyone here is human, btw, despite the manifold planets). It’s just strange…like, why didn’t we read all this while it was happening, and not as a random flashback in the middle of an action scene? 

Along the way Chet learns of Abraxas, the leader of the rebels who are against Pawk Lundiner; of course this made me think of Santana. One of Lundiner’s people is a spy, and Chet starts working with this person – and meanwhile Avon, who has also been brought to Sunstop 8 against her will (Lundiner’s agents under the mistaken notion she’s Chet’s “woman’), is a prisoner of Abraxas. Oh and I also forgot, but back in Earth orbit we have Rocky, Chet’s muscle-bound oaf of an assistant, who has his own running subplot in the novel. Again, the tone is super juvenile with chapter headings like, “Rocky takes a pod” or the like, describing events that are about to happen. Well anyway, dimwit Rocky is another who brings us the kinky tone; he has a busty babe of his own on the satellite he and Chet live on, and he's rammed her so much she’s “sore,” a running joke in her dialog that gets old. This gal gives us the rape humor I mentioned above; part of her schtick is getting on the interplanetary waves and screaming “Rape!” to see if any cops will respond to the call – all so as to suss out the cops who are constantly looking for that pernicious bookie Chet McCoy, we’re informed. 

But then the humor goes away when Chet learns that poor Avon has been raped; the novel takes an unexpected turn into the grim when the two are finally reunited and Chet finds his “beloved” chained up in a cave, for daily sexual subjugation and beatings by one of Abraxas’s men. Or, as Avon herself explains to Chet, gesturing to herself, “Do you see a woman or a beat-up broad?” Here Chet and Avon themselves get the closest to sex they’ll ever get in the novel, stripping down and feigning sex to distract that very same rapist. The novel heads to a close with Chet taking on Abraxas, presumably the inspiration for the otherwise confounding cover art by Larry Kresek, which makes Chet McCoy look like Peter Fonda. 

Overall, Sunstop 8 started off strong and I was loving the freaky-funky-future-‘70s vibe. But midway through it got mired in a repetitive formula of Pawk Lundiner ordering Chet to do something, Chet saying no, Lundiner throwing Chet in prison, and then Chet finally doing what he’d been ordered to do in the first place. Also, the swank future-‘70s touches abruptly went away, the highlight of course being Juell’s stereo system. I did like the somewhat raunchy tone (Rocky for example constantly thinks of sex), and the humor is for the most part like a sci-fi Porky’s. But the story was just let down by the sluggish, repetitive pace; even the action scenes tend to trudge on, and also lack much impact given the novel’s overall comedic tone. 

Here’s a sample of the interior illustrations, which are credited to a Stuart Shiffman; this one depicts Chet struggling against a massive android that plagues him for the first half of the novel: 

Thursday, September 29, 2022

Traveler #9: The Stalking Time


Traveler #9: The Stalking Time, by D.B. Drumm
June, 1986  Dell Books

Traveler takes on a new vibe with this ninth volume, which was written by Ed Naha (who will serve as “D.B. Drumm” for the rest of the series). Apparently feeling that the sub-Road Warrior theme of the previous books has worn thin, Naha introduces the concept that the titular Traveler is now basically a “diplomat” who serves the newly-formed U.S. government. This means that Traveler comes off a bit differently than he did in previous volumes, and truth be told his determination to represent the government seems a little forced. 

One thing that’s made clear is that some time has passed in the series. We’re often reminded that the nukes fell “twenty years ago,” whereas previous volumes had it as thirteen or even fifteen years ago. Not only that, but Traveler when we meet him this time is headed up into the mideast, his first time here since before the war, having undertaken a “year-long mission” for newly-elected President Jefferson. When Traveler tangles with a group of roadrats (ie the leather-garbed road scavengers “inspired” by the ones in the Mad Max films), we’re told that they are better-equipped than the ones Traveler fought “a half-dozen years ago” in the western portion of the US. In other words, we’re about five to six years out from the earliest books in the series, and the year – though it’s never outright stated – is now 2009. 

In a way The Stalking Time works as a series reset; in previous volumes Traveler always had someone with him, whether it was one of his old army buddies or Jan, the American Indian babe who was the love of Traveler’s life and whatnot. This time Traveler is truly alone, driving along in the Meat Wagon and listening to John Coltrane tapes, and there’s no mention of those earlier comrades. Other that is than a few sequences where Traveler dreams about them. So in a way Traveler lives up to his mantle this time, traveling the post-nuke roadways alone…save that is for the new motive Naha has given him. 

Traveler as a diplomat is one thing, but what’s worse is that in The Stalking Time he’s often getting saved by someone else. Traveler does not come off nearly as badass as he did in the superior volumes by John Shirley. And also, whereas Shirley’s installments were fast-moving slices of horror-tinged post-nuke pulp, Naha’s are often sluggish. Even though the novel’s the same short length as those earlier books, it feels a lot longer – the same sentiment I had about Naha’s previous installment The Road Ghost

I think the reason behind this is that Naha thinks the whole storyline is ridiculous, and one can sense his sneering through the pages. I never got that impression from Shirley’s books; he was clearly having fun with them. Naha on the other hand goes for a pseudo-“spoofy” vibe that’s almost as egregious as in The Destroyer. What I mean to say is, neither the author nor the characters seem to take anything seriously, and Naha is constantly making snarky asides via the narrative or the dialog. Now to be sure it’s not as bad as in The Destroyer, I mean things still matter here and not everything’s a joke, but the vibe is close. Actually if I want to stay within the post-nuke realm, The Last Ranger would be a good comparison, with the same dark humor. Only whereas The Last Ranger has a nihilistic streak, Naha’s Traveler has a satirical streak. 

So throughout Naha constantly undercuts the tension he himself creates in the plot with sarcastic rejoinders or snarky comments ridiculing the situation. It just gives the sense that it’s all a joke, and folks if you know anything about me you know I don’t like shit like this in my men’s adventure. I want it straight no chaser. Naha’s sarcastic fun-poking was fine in his Robocop novelization, as it matched the vibe of the movie itself, but here it gets in the way of the post-apocalyptic fun. At any rate, his books so far have suffered greatly in comparison to John Shirley’s; Shirley too might have thought the series was ridiculous, but the reader never got that impression. 

But seriously, you know you’re in trouble when Naha spends more time on the trashy décor of a hotel Traveler stays in than on the action scenes. This sequence too is evidence of the new starical vibe of the series; at one point Traveler ingratiates himself into the orbit of a post-nuke warlord who calls himself Dragon, and who has taken over a hotel for his headquarters – one that is done up with themes for various rooms, and Traveler gets one with an “Arabian Nights” theme. And rather than a hockeymasked Lord Humongous type, Dragon is a dapper black man who wears “Day-Glo pimp clothing” and patterns himself after a Blaxploitation character. 

However that’s not to say we don’t have any of the customary Traveler horror vibe. There’s a cool part where Traveler almost gets eaten by blind scar-faced ghouls who live underground, only to be saved by a hulking bounty hunter called Angel Eyes. The uncredited artist who did the cover must’ve read the book or gotten some seriously good art direction, as the depiction of Angel Eyes on the cover – iron helmet, flamethrower-esque attachment on his back – is exactly as he’s described in the book. (Though I’m not sure why the artist had to put so much focus on the guy’s ass!) But this is also part of the problem. Angel Eyes saves Traveler, and Traveler is saved a few other times in the book. It just seems at odds with previous installments. That said, Traveler does save Angel Eyes immediately after. 

Traveler also seems at odds with his past self in another way – he makes dumb choices. As part of that belabored “ingratiating into Dragon’s forces” scenario, Traveler finds himself sent off with two other stooges to create a diversion. Traveler ties these guys up and leaves them to an overly-complicated fate, driving off. It’s almost as if Naha is telegraphing what will happen next, and sure enough those two eventually show up to blow Traveler’s cover story. The Traveler of the Shirley installments would’ve seen this eventuality and would’ve just blown their brains out to save himself the trouble. 

One of the highlights of the novel is the town Traveler comes upon. It seems to have come out of a Norman Rockwell painting, mostly because it was designed before the war as a tourist attraction. There’s also an underground vault of goods that the mayor, a hotstuff blonde who was in kindergarten when the nukes fell, is desperate to keep secret. This underground vault is what Dragon wants, and what Traveler must stop him from getting. But it’s almost as if Naha changes his mind about this, as in the climax it’s the town’s kids who turn out to be Dragon’s target – which leads to a nice action hero-worthy bit of Traveler racing to save a schoolbus full of abducted kids. 

The focus on youth is another weird new element to the series. Quite frequently in The Stalking Time we’re reminded that WWIII was 20 years ago, and the young roadrats and such scurrying around were, like Mayor Emma Fowler, just kids when the bombs dropped. Yet they’ve grown up in a world of hate, which is all they know – and thus Traveler sometimes has a hard time shooting these roadrat punks who are trying to kill him. It’s an understandable sentiment on Traveler’s part, yet at the same time it’s nothing that has ever occurred to him in the previous volumes. One really gets the impression here that he’s an old man wandering around a world of angry youth. 

Speaking of which there’s a reveal on Angel Eyes that’s crazy but also sort of telegraphed, and also way out of the realm of previous installments. It does however have an unexpected emotional impact, given the reason behind Angel Eyes’s determination to kill Dragon. The problem though is that Traveler sort of sits on the sidelines in the climax, that is after he’s saved that schoolbus of kids. After this Traveler sits around – or perhaps that should be flies around – as Angel Eyes gets his revenge on Dragon. But it’s just another indication of the sort of weakened state Traveler has in this volume. 

Maybe it’s just something we’ll have to get used to, as Naha wrote the rest of the series. And given that he wrote the first volume, perhaps Naha’s Traveler can be considered the Traveler. Who knows; as usual I’m probably putting too much thought into it. All told, The Stalking Time was an entertaining installment of Traveler, maybe less violent than previous ones – and certainly less sexually-explicit, with Traveler’s one score occuring off-page at the very end of the novel – but entertaining nonetheless. I mean when it comes to post-nuke pulp, I’d certainly rather read this than Roadblaster.

Thursday, September 1, 2022

Robocop


Robocop, by Ed Naha
July, 1987  Dell Books

I did not see Robocop in the theater when it came out, even though I was an action movie junkie and saw the majority of the big ones in the theater (despite being well under the 17 years of age required for R-rated movies). I skipped Robocop because I’d heard it was ultra-violent and I was skittish about such things, even though I eagerly read the gore-soaked pages of Phoenix Force. But reading about exploding heads is a lot different than seeing exploding heads. 

My brother, who is seven years older than me, came home on leave from the Air Force around the time Robocop was released on VHS; he rented it, and I tried watching some of it. Literally the first thing I saw was the mutated guy getting hit by the van and exploding. That was pretty much it for me. I’m not sure when I finally sat down and watched Robocop on my own, but I can say that several years ago I got the Blu Ray, which features the uncut version, and man I loved the hell out of it. It was brilliant in how it operated on two levels: as an ultra-gory action flick you could take straight and as an ultra-gory satire of an action flick. But then director Paul Verhoeven pulled the same trick a few years later in Total Recall

Once upon a time I knew a guy who had two minor roles in Robocop. Humorously, the film was shot in Dallas, despite being set in Detroit, and about twenty years ago I worked at a successful startup based in Carrollton, Texas (essentially a Dallas suburb), and there was a Hispanic guy in his 40s or so who worked there named Tomas who had done some extra work years before. He told me he’d been in Robocop, in two non-dialog bit parts: as a cop and as a gang member (he even re-enacted his scene for this part, to my amusement). Tomas didn’t seem like a guy who would make such stuff up…and, sure enough, when I watched my Blu Ray years ago, I spotted a younger Tomas as a cop.  I did not catch him as a gang member, though, so maybe his face is not on screen for this role or it was just a cut scene.  But I just rewatched the movie for the first time since I got the Blu Ray, and Tomas appears at the 52:46 mark, as the moustached cop who steps out of Robocop’s way in the precinct data room.  

Well anyway, so ends my personal connection with Robocop, as paltry a connection as could be. Now let’s talk about this novelization! Another one Robert Mann has kindly sent me, and once again I am very thankful for it. This is not a novelization I would’ve considered seeking out, but man I’m glad I read it, as author Ed Naha – who around this time was also writing Traveler – has done a great job of capturing the darkly comic vibe of the film. He’s also added a lot more humanity to Robocop than there is in the film. The only thing he does not convey is the gory ultra-violence of the film…but honestly an accomplishment like that would take someone like David Alexander in his Phoenix prime. 

The main thing Naha nails in this novelization is the satirical vibe of the film. I’d love to know whether this was accidental or by design. There is evidence here and there that Naha was at least familiar with who would be playing various roles: main villain Clarence Boddicker is described as having a “high forehead,” which would be an accurate description of future That ‘70s Show dad Kurtwood Smith, who played Boddicker – and I bet it would make for some serious head-fuckery to watch a couple episodes of That ‘70s Show right after Robocop. But anyway Naha really seems to understand that Robocop, at its core, is an over-the-top dark parody of action movies, and he clearly has a good time writing the book. 

First thing to note though is that Naha’s novelization is everything the Robocop rip-off series Steele should have been. It also seems evident that Cybernarc was inspired by Naha’s tie-in novel; some of the descriptions of how Robocop acts and thinks are very similar to those of Rod the robot in Cybernarc. We even get minor mentions that Robocop has a “combat mod” setting, same as Rod. So really Naha’s Robocop could be seen as an inspiration for those later series, and probably other similar ones that I haven’t yet read, like Horn

Another notable thing about the novelization is that it veers – if only slightly – from the finished film. The most notable difference is that Robocop, or “Robo” as Naha refers to him in the narrative, has a lot more personality in the novel, with more dialog and more emotional drive. There are also minor variances in some of the action scenes. Also the proto-meme that derived from the film, “I’d buy that for a dollar!,” is not present in this novelization. However, Naha does serve up a lot of pop culture spoofery, with a Benny Hill-esque show often mentioned, and most humorously there’s the TV show T.J. Lazer, a not-so-subtle spoof of T.J. Hooker, complete with a lead actor in “a badly-designed toupee.” Another random bit of piss-taking occurs late in the novel, when we’re informed by a TV broadcast that 97 year-old Sylvester Stallone has died, due to a failed brain transplant. We’re further informed that his last movie, Rambo 38: Old Blood, will be released posthumously. 

If we’re to take Stallone’s stated age literally, that would place Robocop around the year 2043. However the year is never outright stated in the novel. Even though the vibe is very much 1980s, what with the pop culture references and whatnot, we’re informed off-hand that there’s a moon colony and regular space flight. But otherwise this is a solely terrestial story, the entirety of it taking place in the hellish New Detroit. Otherwise this “future” is less tech-savy than our actual future, with people still watching regular televisions and of course no cell phones or internet mentioned. The cops in New Detroit do have dashboard GPS monitors on their “TurboCruisers,” which probably seemed pretty sci-fi in 1987. 

At 187 pages of small-ish print, Naha’s Robocop does a good job of capturing the vibe of the movie and adding a bit more emotional depth. One gets a better glimpse here of the plight of Robo himself, who of course starts life as a cop named Murphy. Naha I felt did a better job than the film of capturing the horror Murphy undergoes when he is killed in action, and then brought back to life by science, his memory erased. Naha has a recurring stylistic trick of “Good. Very good.” which runs through the narrative, conveying Robo’s gradual regaining of his memory. But as mentioned the one thing Naha does not convey is the nutjob violence of the film; while the novel is certainly violent, Naha does not dwell on the gore, usually going more for the emotions of the people shooting at each other than the sprays of arterial blood. 

There is prescience both here and in the movie that New Detroit has fallen into ruin, overcome by crime, and the cops are powerless to stop it. But rather than a “Defund the Police” movement, the cops aren’t around – and eventually go on strike – because they’re just outnumbered by the violent criminals. “Super predators,” as they were referred to at the time, even by left-leaning politicians who were unafraid of being called racist. Thus corporations have stepped in to take control of some police precincts, in particular megacorp OCP, which runs the New Detroit precinct. Cops wear OCP patches on their uniforms and are treated like just another product in the corporation’s portfolio. One wonders if this will become a reality someday, but again a dfference here, same as in Colony, is that these fictional future corporations are devoted solely to profit. 

So only in the “bloodthirsty corporate executive” aspect does Robocop seem dated. Hell, even the ‘80s-esque TV shows in this mid-21st Century setting are believable, given the endless spate of remakes, reboots, and recyclings Hollywood gives us these days. I mean hell, even Robocop itself has already been remade, though I never saw it – and don’t know anyone who did. And I don’t know what the point would be, as surely the Hollywood of today couldn’t give us something as skewed as Verhoeven’s original. But as for the future setting, Naha doesn’t beat us over the head with it, and in fact doesn’t go for much set-up or world-building. It’s the future, crime is rampant, and the cops are owned by a corporation, and that’s pretty much it. 

Also, cops are still seen as the good guys in this future; there’s absolutely none of the stigma of today, and further the cops aren’t hamstrung by politicians. If anything the impression Naha gives is that it’s that the criminals are just too populous and too heavily-equipped, and the cops aren’t a match for them. He presents New Detroit as a bombed-out hellhole, one that you’d have to be insane to be a cop in. But when we meet him Officer Murphy has just been assigned to the precinct, and Naha puts more focus on Murphy’s home life than the film did. To the extent that you really feel bad for Murphy and his loss. In fact, we learn that Murphy and his wife, Jan, are fighting on his first day at work – which as we know will be his last day at work. As Murphy, at least. 

The plot of Naha’s Robocop so follows the film that I’ll save you all the misery of my usual rundown. It only diverges in the little details, and, mainly, the fact that Robo has more personality here. But the elements of the film are all here, like Murphy being partnered with a tough female cop named Anne Lewis, though it’s the ‘80s now and Naha refers to her as “Lewis” in the narrative. In other words she isn’t “Anne,” as she would’ve been if the book had been written a decade or so earlier. But all this stuff is basically the same as the film, including the brutal murder of Murphy by Boddicker’s men – brutal, but not as brutal as the film itself, particularly the uncut version. But then, Murphy does get his hand shotgunned off in the book, too. 

Some of the action scenes are different, in particular an early one in which Robo stops a convenience store robbery. Robo also has occasional one-liners, like when a perp shoots at him and Robo responds, “Now it’s my turn!” Again, he’s more of a standard tough cop action hero than the robot of the film. Other minor but notable changes: Boddicker’s awesome line “Bitches leave” is instead here, “Okay, sluts. Take a hike.” Not nearly as impactful, I’d say. Also, there’s a different ending. Whereas the movie ends with Robo proudly announcing his name is “Murphy!,” the novel continues after this scene with an epilogue in which Robo picks up a stray dog, to be his new companion, and gets back in his TurboCruiser to kick ass. 

Naha’s writing in Robocop is strong and he moves the story along with good imagery. However he is a terrible POV-hopper. We’ll be in one character’s perspective, then a paragraph later we’re in someone else’s, and then someone else’s after that, and there’s nary a line break to warn us. As ever this makes for a bumpy read. Naha wrote for Creem, I believe, and his snarky rock attitude is in effect throughout; for example, we learn some recurring cop characters in the New Detroit precinct are named “Manson” “Ramirez,” and “Starkweather,” ie the last names of some of the more infamous serial killers. Wait, I just checked Google and these characters are in the film, too, so it wasn’t Naha’s doing. But I’m sure a guy who could come up with a spoof of T.J. Hooker would’ve appreciated that. 

Overall I really enjoyed Robocop, to the extent that I intend to watch the movie again sometime. I’m also inspired to check out Naha’s novelization of Robocop 2, which Robert also sent me. I’ve seen that movie exactly once: when it came out in the theater and I was 15 years old. I can’t recall if I liked it…I remember being annoyed with the punk kid in it. But at least I saw it in the theater, even though I was still underage; I recall my dad bought tickets for me and my friend. I also saw Predator 2 with the same kid a few months later, and that one I loved; in fact I’m sure I’m one of the very few who prefers Predator 2 to the first Predator. And I’m not ashamed to admit it.

Wednesday, August 10, 2022

The Gang


The Gang, by Herbert Kastle
December, 1976  Dell Books

This was the first of two paperback originals Herbert Kastle published through Dell; most of his previous novels had been hardcovers. Given the late ’76 date I’m going to assume it was the oil crisis that resulted in this book being paperback only; it’s my understanding that the crisis caused publishers to revisit their entire lines, in some cases outright canceling them – the fate that befell most men’s adventure novels at the time. I guess it was only a temporary setback for Kastle, as by 1979’s awesome Ladies Of The Valley he was back in hardcover (though the paperback was also published by Dell). 

Back in 2013 I reviewed Cross-Country, the novel which preceded The Gang. As I mentioned in my review, Cross-Country started off a sort-of trilogy, with The Gang being second and Death Squad, Kastle’s other Dell PBO, being the third. However the only thing linking the novels is Detective Sergeant Eddy Roersch of Manhattan West Homicide; the events of Cross-Country aren’t even mentioned in The Gang, so reading that book first certainly isn’t necessary. In fact someone just picking up The Gang would have no idea it even is a sort of follow-up to a previous book. However there is a bit of a benefit in reading the books in order; for example, we learn here that Roersch, a 58 year-old widow, has married the former hooker who lived down the hall from him, and is about to have a baby boy with her. In Cross-Country it was established that Roersch was starting to feel more for the former pro, Ruthie, than just the occasional freebie. 

I knew something was up when Roersch was happy in his intro; no one’s happy in a Herbert Kastle novel. I’ve read a few of the guy’s books and I love his writing, but I can’t help but feel that Herbert Kastle himself was one unhappy guy. The theme is constant in his books of rage boiling just below the surface, of people ready to lash out. His protagonists are most always unlikeable pricks…like the rapist stalker protagonist in Hot Prowl. Not to read too much into the book, but one of the protagonists of The Gang is a novelist who decides to live out his crime novels by going on a kill-spree rampage. In fact I think there was a similar subplot in Ladies Of The Valley, with a screenwriter who was a serial killer or somesuch. 

Well anyway, in my earlier reviews of Herbert Kastle I wasn’t yet aware of the work of Lawrence Sanders. Now that I have read a few of Sanders’s novels and researched some others of his I plan to read, I can’t help but suspect that Kastle, like many other crime writers of the day, was influenced by Sanders…particularly The First Deadly Sin. Kastle’s style even seems similar to Sanders’s in The Gang, mixing a methodical police procedural with lurid elements. This of course is a good thing; I’m just noting, not criticizing. But then again it could just be a coincidence. It’s just that the milieu, the focus on actual detecting instead of “cop movie” style escapades, and the periodic detours into graphic sex seem to be what put Lawrence Sanders on the map. But I guess Sanders just had a better agent, as his novels were all bestsellers and Herbert Kastle’s came out as a paperback original. 

But as I’ve said before, I prefer paperback originals, if for no other reason than the cover art, which is always better than hardcover cover art. The cover for The Gang is especially cool, but uncredited. Also a bit misleading, as the lead female character, Cynthia Derringer, has dark hair. And, unfortunately, she does not wield an Uzi at any point in the story. But otherwise one of the best covers ever, and surely had to move at least a few units in December of 1976. Or maybe not, as The Gang only received this paperback printing in the US (I think it came out in hardcover in the UK, where Kastle had more fame, it seems – in fact his last novel was only published there), and now appears to be entirely forgotten. 

So back to the unlikeable protagonists. Roersch is not the main character in The Gang, which again brings to mind the work of Lawrence Sanders, in how his cop character Edward X. Delaney would be the protagonist in some novels, like The First Deadly Sin, but a minor character in others, like The Anderson Tapes. Note even the same first names for these characters: Eddy Roersch and Edward Delaney. Well anyway, Roersch does feature in much of The Gang, and is the only thing akin to a hero we get in the novel…however he has no real interraction with the main plot, despite Kastle’s valiant struggles to make it seem as if he does. Indeed, Roersch could be entirely removed from the novel and the plot would not be impacted…Kastle ensures we understand this, for some curious reason, often reinforcing how Roersch is “too late” to change the tide in several situations. 

The actual “heroes” of the book are the fucked-up losers who make up the titular Gang. A big problem with the novel is how implausible all this is, though. In fact there were times I was wondering if Kastle was spoofing Sanders, even down to the bloated page length…I mean The Gang is “only” 316 pages, but good gravy does it have some small and dense print. It sometimes seemed that no matter how dogged an effort I was putting into the reading, the book still wouldn’t get any closer to the end. And that’s the other thing…The Gang isn’t very enjoyable or entertaining. It’s kind of ridiculous and hard to buy, and not helped by its rushed conclusion. One almost gets the impression that Kastle himself didn’t believe in the book and was just bulling his way through it. 

So here is the plot: A quartet of people who have been screwed over by life in various ways decide to become “The Gang” and pull a series of violent robberies across the country, with the intent of heisting enough money to go off to South America and live like kings for the rest of their lives. But they aren’t professional thieves or even criminals…save for one of them, 17 year-old Mark Corman, who is a criminal only in that he has a juvenile record for breaking and entering and other stuff that he now regrets. His backstory is what brings Roersch into the tale, though it’s a bit hard to buy. The belabored setup has it that Mark got pulled into the robbery of a jewelry store in Manhattan in which the owner was killed, not by Mark, and Mark freaked out and took off, leaving his two comrades behind. Roersch gets the case, and given his Columbo-esque detecting abilities soon figures there’s more to it than a simple robbery gone wrong, and indeed there is. Though it has no bearing on the major plot per se. 

Meanwhile Mark’s dad, Manny Corman, a promoter gone to seed who lives in Los Angeles and hasn’t seen his son in six years, has fallen in with Bert Brown, a successful novelist in his 40s. The two men each have a casual sex thing going with hotstuff brunette Celia Derringer, a beauty with “balloonlike tits” and a “big” rear who is the kept mistress of a famous bandleader in LA. Yes, it’s all very convoluted. But long story short, Celia’s also got a thing going on the side with Bert and the bandleader suspects her – rightly, it turns out – of whoring, and has been keeping tabs on her, and shows up while she and Bert are mid-coitus. This leads to a violent confrontation in which, typical for a Kastle character, Celia’s latent rage is unleashed in full force. 

These four characters (Manny, Mark, Celia, and Bert), now on the run from the law – Manny because he’s gone on the lamb to help his son – decide to become “The Gang,” all an idea of Bert’s. The brains behind the group, Bert convinces them to form a “family,” which appears to have spawned the cover blurb comparison to Helter-Skelter. Celia herself even thinks of the Manson Family, though notes that they’re too grungy and unkempt for The Gang. But it’s all so very implausible, how these four people just suddenly decide to band together as criminals, as they have “nothing to lose,” even down to Celia becoming the “Earth Mother” for them…having sex with all of “her men!” Weird stuff for sure, and while Kastle does his best to make it all seem plausible, it just rings hollow from beginning to end. 

As I read the book I concluded that the reason it all seemed implausible was because Kastle hadn’t sufficiently set it up. Bert Brown is the originator of the idea, and we’re told it’s because he’s done some crime novels and now wants to live them out. But we’re not told anything about his books, and really the character is introduced to us shortly before he begins his criminal career, so it’s not like there’s much establishing material. Bert’s real driving force is that, a la Alex Jason in The Enforcer, he has terminal stomach cancer. The fact that he’s soon to die is what unshackles him from society’s norms and causes him to push The Gang further and further into crime. But his ensuing viciousness – gunning down a hapless waiter in an early heist – is just hard to accept. Again though Kastle tries to cover his bases; previous to this Bert was secretly a coward, and after being called out on this in the confrontation with Celia’s cuckolded bandleader it’s clear he’s driven to prove how much of a man he is. 

And yes, a theme of masculinity also runs through the novel, and while Kastle often compares and contrasts “the old days” with the novel’s present of 1976, surely he didn’t realize that masculinity itself would one day be questioned. I mean Supreme Court justices don’t even know what women are these days! I guess things were just more clear-cut in the ‘70s. One of the many subplots concerns how men can survive in this increasingly stultifying world, and also there’s a running subtext about fathers and sons. Even here though Kastle stumbles in the actual plotting, because while Manny Corman is introduced as being desperate to help his son Mark, soon enough Manny’s convinced the whole Gang idea is the only option they have…and the fact that he’s putting his son in even greater danger is just sort of brushed under the narrative carpet. As I say, the entire novel is just so implausible in so many ways. 

Meanwhile Eddy Roersch has his own shit to deal with. As mentioned he’s 58, with 30-some years on the job, and a great record with cracking cases. Even though Columbo is dissed in passing, that’s the cop Roersch most resembles, a sort of mule-headed investigator who refuses to see the “easy” case his fellow cops see and will keep sifting through details until he finds something deeper. However Roersch always “freezes” on tests, thus he’s never advanced beyond Sergeant, even though people without nearly his track record have. Such would be the case of Roersch’s new boss, Lt. Krinke, who immediately takes a dislike to Roersch; Krinke is a stickler for detail, more concerned with rules and regulations, and bridles at Roerschs’s intuition-based approach. This rivalry takes up most of Roersch’s plot, with Krinke seeming to have it in for Roersch. Oh and speaking of changing times…later in the novel a colleague informs Roersche that rumor has it Lt. Krinke might be a closeted gay, hence his animosity, and Roersch can’t believe it: “Gays in the police department?” 

The titular Gang starts small, hitting a restaurant they happen to be eating at. This is another implausible bit, as Bert realizes he needs to sort of shock the system to make the others realize that the Gang is all they have. In other words Kastle is at pains to create a twisted family dynamic, and it occurred to me that this was the same thing he did in Cross-Country (which also had characters increasingly “act crazy” at the whims of the plot). But I had a very hard time believing that Manny, whose entire presence here to begin with is to to keep his son out of danger, goes along with it, holding a gun per Bert’s order and chortling over the unexpectedly-large haul they get. From there it’s to a furtner cementing of the familial bond; Bert has it that Celia will sleep with all three men – and Celia is all game for it. In fact the novel’s most explicit sequence concerns her initial boink with teenaged Mark. 

This particular sex scene goes on for a few pages, whereas the (relatively few) others go for just a few not-very-graphic paragraphs. There’s also a weird bit where a highway patrolman inadvertently pulls over the Gang, not realizing who they are…and they get the drop on him…and Bert urges Celia to screw the bound officer. It just all seems so dispirited, and I got the impression Kastle was just going through the motions, so to speak, maybe trying to provide the lurid stuff ‘70s crime readers demanded, but his heart wasn’t in it. But Kastle certainly delivers on the lurid vibe with a random focus on sleaze – both Manny and Mark, we learn, are well-hung…something Manny is happy to learn about his boy, peeping at him over the wall of a urinal! And then wondering if it’s acceptable for a dad to talk to his son about such things! 

Regardless, the stuff with Roersch is more entertaining than the entirety of the Gang plot, even though the Roersch material lacks much action and has zero sex. It’s really just a methodical procedural, with Roersch stubbornly tracking leads in what every other cop – especially his despotic boss – thinks is an open and shut case. Of course it wouldn’t be much of a plot if there wasn’t more to the case, and Roersch’s unraveling of the web is more entertaining than the various heists the Gang perpetrates. In fact I found much of their material tedious and unwelcome. They’re just too savage to be believable; I mean on the very first job Bert is gunning down some hapless waiter. They also take up this cutesy schtick of leaving coy messages in blood or lipstick at their crime scenes; another Manson inspiration, I guess. Their hits become increasingly reckless and violent, with each member, save for Mark, becoming increasingly crazy. 

This was another thing I remembered about Cross-Country; a female character in it started acting nuts toward the end, even though she’d been relatively normal beforehand. The same thing happens here, with Celia just getting more and more aggressively schizoid, at one point almost getting “her men” killed when she starts up some shit with a waiter. (Waiters particularly seem to suffer at the hands of The Gang.) Little does Celia realize that a few armed cops happen to be dining in the restaurant, something Mark desperately tries to warn her of. Throughout all these escapades Mark is the sole voice of reason, never taking part in the actual violence; this is the thing Roersch clings to, back in New York, as he’s determined to save Mark Corman somehow. 

But the two plots never gel, despite how much Kastle attempts to make it seem like they do. Roersch, a 30-some year veteran, suddenly gets touchy-feely about 17 year-old petty criminal Mark Corman, initially just one of the subjects in Roersch’s latest case…but as things progress Roersch starts thinking of him like a father. This is another thing that upsets Lt. Krinke, leading to another face-off between the two. The cop-world detailing here is very realistic and Kastle excels at bringing to life the monotonous routine of police work. He’s clearly done his work on how the NYPD operates; perhaps his advisor was former police captain Tom Walker, author of Fort Apache: The Bronx, who provided blurbs for both The Gang and Death Squad

It's implausible how the confrontation with Krinke ultimately comes to a boil, though. However Kastle delivers a nice wrapup to this that’s touching without being maudlin (referring here to the name Roersch decides to give his son, who is born at the end of the book). The wrapup with The Gang isn’t nearly as well constructed. After various heists, The Gang is riding high – and then we suddenly learn via dialog that they’ve been spotted along a road near Peekskill, New York, shot it out with a patrolman, and are now holed up in a particular house, which is under siege by an armada of cops. This climax is basically thrust upon us with no real setup, and it’s almost as if Kastle felt the book was getting too long and decided to cut to the chase. Or it’s more indication that he himself didn’t believe in the entire premise of the book and wanted to get it over with. 

To make things worse, Roersch still has no interraction with the main plot; throughout the book he is always “too late” to do anything about the situation with Mark Corman. Again, it makes Roersch seem completely unnecessary to the novel. Hopefully he will be more integrated into the next one, Death Squad, which apparently concerns a rogue force of cops. Roersch’s storyline was I felt the best part of The Gang, which otherwise was a curiously deflated novel from Herbert Kastle. 

Great cover art, though! And also I’ll always remember The Gang as the book I read when I got Covid. Speaking of which, I apologize if any of the preceding review was hard to understand – I wrote it while I was getting over Covid, which essentially was like a bad cold for two days. But at least now I can mark “Get Covid” off of my bucket list.

Monday, August 1, 2022

Sharky’s Machine


Sharkys Machine, by William Diehl
August, 1979  Dell Books

I’d only ever heard of Sharky’s Machine, and that was in relation to the 1981 Burt Reynolds movie, which I’ve still never seen. My mom was a big Burt Reynolds fan, like I expect most women were at the time, so I assume that’s how I first heard of the movie. I was only six or seven years old at the time. I’m not sure if I ever knew that the movie was based on a novel; even over the years when I’ve gone on periodic ‘70s crime novel kicks, I haven’t come across William Diehl’s original Sharky’s Machine, first published in hardcover in 1978. But the other month – on Father’s Day of this year, in fact – I spotted this Dell paperback edition at the Plano Half Price Bookstore, for a whopping $1.75. Yes, it irks me that the bookstore chain no longer lives up to its name – I mean the original cover price itself was under a dollar – but that seemed cheap enough. 

First of all a note on the awesome cover art. I can’t make out the signature, and online searching has not revealed who did the artwork for this Dell paperback. I see what appears to be an “S” and a “V” in the artwork signature, so I’m wondering if this is the work of Charles Sovek, who did the also-awesome cover art for Dakota #3 (per Bob Deis, who identified the artwork for me). The art style appears to be similar, so it’s possible. Also of note is that this is one of those double-bang-for-your-buck covers (actually, double-bang-for-your-buck-seventy-five, in my case), as it opens into a two-page spread, featuring characters and incidents from the novel. Another interesting note is that the Sharky depicted on the cover looks more like Nick Nolte than Burt Reynolds, but of course this paperback was published two years before the film was released. Here is the interior art:


But as mentioned I never saw the film, and now that I’ve read the novel I’m not sure if I’m in a hurry to. This is mainly because, judging from the trailer, the film version of Sharky’s Machine appears to be a completely different story from Diehl’s original novel. The dialog and situations in that trailer have no relation to anything in this novel. Reading Marty McKee’s review at the Craneshot blog leads me to conclude that director-star Reynolds and his screenwriters completely reshaped the original narrative; I mean the stuff Marty mentions, with one of the villains being an Italian mobster with a psycho brother (played by Henry Silva no less!) is unlike anything in the novel. Indeed, the villain of the novel appears to have walked out of a James Bond film: he’s a corpulent sadist with a legion of Chinese assassins at his disposal, and has an inventor who makes giant robots for him. 

This Dell paperback is stuffed to the gills with rave reviews from industry publications. A funny thing is that a glance at the Kirkus reviews of ensuing Diehl novels sees the word “derivative” most often used. I say this is funny because I found Sharky’s Machine itself derivative. As mentioned the villain and his henchmen come out of Bond, the humorous “cop banter” and the cast of quirky cops are out of Joseph Wambaugh and/or Ed McBain, and there’s even a part where an audio tape is transcribed for us that could be straight out of The Anderson Tapes by Lawrence Sanders. There’s also an “Oriental menace” motif here courtesy the villain that brings to mind Eric Lustabader’s The Ninja, but that novel came later. Sharky’s Machine even concludes more like a James Bond movie than it does a cop thriller, with Sharky and his “Machine” trying to track down an assassin in an amusement park filled with giant robots. And I haven’t even mentioned the pseudo-ninjas who attack Sharky earlier in the book. 

The novel, if you haven’t guessed, is pretty pulpy (I mean that as a compliment), but it’s presented on the level, and I’d wager those industry reviewers were so kind to it because they themselves had no experience in pulp. So while I found Sharky’s Machine derivative and sloppily written, those contemporary reviewers probably couldn’t believe how exciting it was…at least when compared to the usual highbrow shit they had to review. But Sharky’s Machine received a hardcover printing, meaning those professional reviewers covered it for their various highbrow publications – unlike something vastly superior, like, say Bronson: Blind Rage – and thus their rave reviews take up the first few pages of this paperback edition. Another thing I haven’t mentioned yet is that Sharky’s Machine is also packaged here like your typical ‘70s potboiler (also a compliment), the copy and blurbs hyping the action and sex…both of which turn out to be relatively mild. 

At 479 small-print pages, Sharky’s Machine is also of a piece with the typical 1970s crime thriller. But first-time writer Diehl spins his wheels too much to make those pages count. The bloated page length could be another inspiration from Lawrence Sanders, in fact; it seems clear to me that Diehl was inspired by Sanders and looking to mimic his template. What little research I’ve done on William Diehl informs me that he was fifty years old when he started writing this, his first novel. That Sharky’s Machine is a first novel is very evident. The plot jumps around too much, too many characters are shuffled into the narrative with too little impact, and not enough is done to exploit the various situations. Also, most unforgivably, Diehl is a rampant POV-hopper, to the extent that the reader is often confused. By POV-hopping I mean when the narrative switches perspectives without warning the reader via a space break or a new chapter. 

This comes and goes, though; sometimes Diehl cuts chapters when he cuts perspectives, but in the sections with Sharky and the other cops he really POV-hops. And also the novel is several stories tied together: in addition to the tough cop Sharky narrative, we also have material on the 1975 Democrat convention, a Senator who intends to be the next President (Jimmy Carter be damned!), and the Bond-esque villain planning to unveil his massive robot amusement park. But we have to wait a while to even get to all that: the novel starts with two sort of false openings. The first, shorter one, takes place in 1944 Italy, with a GI dropped behind enemy lines to oversee a cargo drop or somesuch; it’s all maddeningly vague for reasons of suspense. Then we jump ahead to 1959 Hong Kong, for a too-long sequence in which an assassin kills a guy while he’s being entertained by a blind prostitute in an opulent cathouse. 

After all this we finally get to grizzled Atlanta cop Sharky, and from here on out the novel is set in 1975. But despite the recent date Diehl still delivers an anachronism; we’re told a character sports a Wings Across America t-shirt, but that album wasn’t released until late 1976. Otherwise the ’75 setting is mostly because one of the subplots ties in to the race to see who will get the nod for to be the Presidential nominee on the Democrat ticket. Unfortunately this stuff, and the pseudo-Bond stuff with the supervillain (whose name is DeLaroza) takes over from the cop thriller I wanted. And sure enough the cop material we do get in Sharky’s Machine is by far the best material in the book. This depsite Sharky himself, who comes off as a bit of a cipher. 

For one, I had a helluva time seeing Burt Reynolds in the role; indeed, the unknown cover artist had the right idea with Nick Nolte, who certainly would’ve been a better choice for the grim and mostly somnambulant protagonist Diehl has given us. But then, Sharky is essentially a supporting character in the novel. As it turns out, the “Machine” of the title is the Vice squad Sharky soon takes control of…or, he sort of takes control of. He still reports to a boss, Lt. Friscoe (the aforementioned guy in the anachronistic Wings shirt), who makes all the decisions. And in fact, the novel is more of an ensemble piece than I expected. Here is where the McBain stuff comes in, as Diehl spends a lot of time with the guys on Sharky’s Machine, with the typical cop banter and jaded outlooks on life and all the expected tropes. What I mean to say is, the book is not a single-protagonist thriller; there are huge portions of the narrative where Sharky disappears. And the other helluva thing is, he isn’t the most effectual of tough cop protagonists. 

This is not evident in Sharky’s intro, though. We meet him while he is in Narcotics, having lived on the streets for several months and growing a shaggy beard in the process to fit in with the underworld scum he’s trying to take down. The opening is super ‘70s with Sharky getting in a shootout with a pimp-attired drug dealer. But the shootout takes place on a commuter bus the dealer has fled onto, and even though Sharky takes him down he’s in trouble with the higher-ups for the incident. I should mention here that the novel is not overly violent, and only features a few action scenes. Also of note is that Sharky’s gun is a 9mm automatic, the make and model never noted, which seems like an unusual gun for a 1975 cop to have. Not that I minded; as I’ve said before, I don’t exactly look for realism in a cop thriller. I mean my favorite tough cop yarn is Stallone’s Cobra, and that movie’s as grounded in reality as the current administration

Sharky is reprimanded by top cop The Bat, a petty official who puts public relations ahead of all else. This is a funny scene with the bizarre bit of Sharky taking off his shoe to stratch his foot. Sharky is then moved to the purgatory of Vice, the place no cop wants to be – clearly the days before Crockett and Tubbs made Vice the coolest department of all. But here’s the funny thing, and yet more evidence that Diehl was a first-time writer; he does absolutely nothing to exploit the entire “Vice” setup, and indeed the plot sees Sharky’s Machine tackling not only a homicide investigation but even a political conspiracy. Sharky being sent to the Vice Squad is essentially window dressing, as it has no bearing on anything that happens, and even though earlier I said I don’t really demand “realism” in cop thrillers, it’s still super hard to buy how these Vice guys are able to skirt regulations and handle a homicide investigation and not let the actual Homicide Department know about it. This is where the movie appears to diverge; the trailer has scenes of Sharky being informed about hookers by the guys in his Machine, ie actual “Vice” stuff, but there’s nothing like that in the novel. 

Another indication of Diehl’s first-time writing is that he tells a lot more than he shows. This occurs throughout the novel, but particularly with the cops who make up the Machine. He clearly wants to have a McBain-esque group of memorable characters, but the problem is he tells us about them instead of displaying their quirks in action. For example, in the previously-mentioned bit where the Machine decides to buck authority and investigate a homicide without letting any other department know. Lt. Friscoe tells the guys they’re crazy if they think they can buck regulations, and then there’s a bit where Machine member Papa starts ranting and raving, and then storms out of the room. Diehl then proceeds to tell us that Papa rarely ever speaks, thus this explosion of his is shocking to the other guys. The thing is, though, we readers have barely seen anything about Papa, so it’s not like we know he rarely speaks. In other words Diehl clearly intends all this to be humorous, like we’re going to chuckle that the guy who never talks just spouted off a few paragraphs of run-on sentences…but in essence Diehl has given us the punchline first and the setup second, so it falls flat. In other words, he has failed to earn that chuckle. 

The Vice stuff that is here is actually interesting, and is as mentioned clearly inspired by The Anderson Tapes. Friscoe informs Sharky that the Machine has been tracking a hooker who has a phone sex operation going, and after tapping her line they’ve come across what they think is a blackmail scheme. Friscoe plays the pertinent recording for Sharky and the ensuing transcript goes on for some pages, very much akin to the text of The Anderson Tapes, and just as explicit as Lawrence Sanders could be. Perhaps even more so, with the hooker engaging in phone sex with some caller and all the ensuing sleazy detail…but again, not an actual sex scene. Just a lot of transcribed dialog, a la The Anderson Tapes

And that, folks, is pretty much it for the entire Vice setup. The Machine learns that another hooker might be part of this scheme, a mysterious figure called “Domino,” and Sharky comes up with the idea of having his cop pal The Nosh bug Domino’s posh penthouse suite. So yes, The Nosh, Papa, The Bat, Sharky – a bunch of quirky and colorful names for what Diehl intends to be a quirky and colorful group, to the extent that you wonder why he never wrote a followup. Oh and I forgot to mention, but Sharky’s first name is never given. Hell, “Sharky” could even be his first name, a la Shark Trager. He’s barely even described, though we learn he has a broken nose. We also learn he was in military intelligence for a bit, as in one sequence they visit an army base to ask questions about a top secret WWII missions, questioning a kooky old vet. Diehl excels in these scenes, writing a goofy spin on the average cop thriller, but there’s just too much flab with all the DeLaroza material, not to mention the material with Hotchins, the would-be Democrat nominee who is in deep with villainous DeLaroza. 

This brings us to another implausibe scenario: mega-babe Domino, a sort of modern-day Phryne of Athens, runs into Sharky, who is disguised as an elevator repairman, and falls for him. I mean this hotstuff brunette who makes her living as a super high-class hooker and is engaged to would-be President Hotchins and is the casual bedmate of supervillain DeLaroza just bumps into a guy who appears to be fixing the elevator in her apartment building and she thinks how good-looking he is. Sharky is in the disguise because he and the Machine are bugging the place, and later he shadows Domino at an upscale grocery store…where she bumps into him again. And invites him to her place for shark fin soup!! It’s one of the more implausible lust-at-first-sight scenarios ever. 

What’s even crazier is…Sharky and Domino never even have sex! Not here, not later in the book, not ever in the book! Domino bats her eyes at Sharky and the dueling perspectives let us know how attracted they are to each other, but Sharky says he’s gotta go and runs back up to the roof of the building, where he lays on a cot and monitors those bugs in Domino’s apartment via a pair of headphones. It turns out that Domino does have sex…with DeLaroza. This is the only other sex scene in Sharky’s Machine, and it’s more of an oral/handjob sort of thing which again goes for the “Oriental mystique,” Domino dressed up in robes and all that nonsense. And Sharky jerks off as he listens! Or at least he orgasms unintentionally while lying on that cot. “Soon to be a major motion picture!” 

The homicide stuff comes up when Diehl takes some unexpected directions with the Sharky-Domino scenario. This whole bit was hard to buy, but hell, they investigated homicides on Miami Vice, too. (If you can’t tell, I’ve been watching Miami Vice again.) Here we really do get a sort of cop novel, with Sharky and his Machine researching a murder, and hurrying up about it because they only have a few days until the department heads come in and the homicide has to be reported through the proper channels. Diehl again delivers an ensemble pice, with a quirky coroner also becoming a part of the team – again, Sharky himself is just one of the characters here, and the novel just as easily could’ve been titled “Papa’s Machine.” But then that sounds kind of dirty. 

But the DeLaroza-Hotchins stuff just takes up too much space. There’s also a lot of stuff about a professional assassin with fraying nerves who ultimately turns out to be tied into the opening stuff in WWII. Again though so much of it is told rather than shown. Gradually we head into the big finale, which again comes more from Bond than McBain: DeLaroza has spent oodles of money on “Pachinko!,” a high-rise amusement park with giant robots and whatnot. The name of the place, “Pachinko,” of course comes from that pinball-esque game that’s so popular in Japan. Along with Cheap Trick, of course. 

I’m fine with the sub-Bond finale, but in a real James Bond movie Bond himself will actually take place in the events. In Sharky’s Machine, our supposed hero Sharky is off-page for the majority of the climax, which instead concerns that pill-popping assassin out for revenge on Hotchins and DeLaroza. I mean really, Sharky and his Machine spend the time running around Pachinko! and trying to find the various people they’re after. But then by this point Sharky has been through a bit of a wringer; captured briefly by DeLaroza, he’s been beaten by those pseudo-ninjas, had some of his pinky finger chopped off, and managed to escape in one of the novel’s few real action scenes. So one could understand if Sharky’s a little tuckered out here in the finale. 

As mentioned, the biggest surprise is that Diehl didn’t farm these characters out into a series. Also as mentioned, I can see where Burt Reynolds and crew likely rewrote a large portion of this narrative to make it more fitting for the bigscreen. Surely Sharky was more engaged in the finale than he is here – I mean Sharky in the novel doesn’t even take out any of the major villains. But then Diehl makes curious writing decisions like this throughout the novel; I refer you again to the inexplicable non-boinking of Sharky and Domino. That one’s an almost unfathomable miss on Diehl’s part. 

You’d never guess, but overall I did enjoy Sharky’s Machine, at least when it was sticking to the “tough cop” material I wanted. I could’ve done without a lot of the political subplot and the Oriental mystique with DeLaroza. I also found myself getting bored toward the end, which you wouldn’t expect given that the finale featured literal giant robots. Then again, I might’ve been more into the crazy finale if Sharky himself had been more involved in it. But overall, I guess I have to say I was mostly entertained for my buck seventy-five.