W.H.O.R.E. - Carter Brown

The front door opened almost immediately, and what sounded like a million decibels of amplified Rolling Stones hit me right between the ears. It was obviously the kind of party where you were nothing but a lousy dropout if you didn't burst a blood vessel within the first five minutes. Standing right in front of me was a cowgirl, straight out of the Wild, Wild West. A silver-streaked blonde with her hair gathered into a topknot that gyrated madly every time she moved her head. She was wearing a blue jacket and matching mini-skirt and white knee-high cowboy boots. The jacket was unbuttoned all the way down the front, revealing the ultimate in cleavage. An open-range-sized martini was clutched precariously in her right hand.

Signet - October 1971

This is one of the Al Wheeler capers from Carter Brown, and plenty of early 70's shenanigans going on in it. Cowgirls, Rolling Stones, martinis in one chapter, dead babes and gun-toting goons dressed as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck in another chapter. Also throw in a fruit-pickers demonstration into the mix and you have a "what the hell's going on?" kind of plot, where our hero Al Wheeler runs around the place trying to find missing suspects and dead bodies at the same time. And every clue leads him back to house that serves as the headquarters for a women's liberation group named W.H.O.R.E. which stands for Women's Hereditary and Obligatory Revolutionary Establishment, just so you pigs don't get the wrong idea!

It all kicks off when Wheeler responds to a beach house where the dead body of a beautiful young woman is discovered by a hysterical chick named Stephanie Channing. Stephanie claims to have no idea who the dead girl is. Stephanie was supposed to meet the owner of the cabin, a dude named Chuck Henry, who was to give her the keys to the place for the weekend. Stephanie immediately informs Wheeler that she's a foundation member of W.H.O.R.E., which provides Wheeler the opportunity to observe that she doesn't look like a lesbian! So yeah, it's that kind of a book. And Wheeler gets his fair share of crap from every member of W.H.O.R.E. he runs into throughout the novel. All of them are drop-dead hot, and all of them waste no time in calling Wheeler a pig. And all Wheeler can do is make cracks about none of them wearing a bra.

Well, as Stephanie is explaining how she came to find the body of the dead girl in the beach cabin, all of a sudden two gun-wielding goons show up wearing paper mache Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck masks. They put the drop on Wheeler and Stephanie and abscond with the body of the dead girl and a very much alive Stephanie after slugging Wheeling. From there on Wheeler has his hands full trying to convince his superiors at the Sheriff's office that a dead girl was whisked away by Mickey Mouse along with his only witness, a women's libber member of W.H.O.R.E. Just another routine case.

It's a goofy caper, and full of politically incorrect jabs at women throughout. I guess there is some turnabout in that Wheeler gets teased and tormented and made a fool of by just about every member of W.H.O.R.E. he comes across. Mind you, this is usually after they disrobe for him in the process. In the end, all of the loose ends get wrapped up, of course, and Wheeler gets the last quip.

These books are routinely entertaining and mindless romps with plenty of titillation and PG humor. This one is a standard Carter Brown novel in that regard, and I'll have forgotten the plot in a week. But a great cover anyway!

The Captors - John Farris

"This is a time of revolution, moral and political revolution, as anyone who reads a newspaper knows. Most people associate revolution with violence and a period of anarchy. We've already had a little violence, which is necessary to earn recognition, but this country is well organized against the revolutionary impulse, so a major and bloody upheaval is as unlikely as it is undesirable. For one thing, there would have to be an economic basis for it, another Great Depression, a worldwide economic collapse. I think we can rule out that possibility. Therefore the revolution now taking place will remain youthful, a student revolt; the working class wont be involved at all. In fact this class is the greatest enemy the revolution has because the values of the proletariat are, as Elijah Jordan proposed, the values of institutions, not individuals." 

TOR books, September 1985

A lot of the fun I have reading these "tawdry" paperbacks from the past is seeing how little things have changed in society. Yeah, technology is full speed on the rails to hell, but its passengers, namely us, Americans from the 'burbs and the cities, are still the same miserable fucked up lot we've always been. Our hairstyles have changed, but not much else.

John Farris is one of those writers whose books are always enjoyable. He has a gift for telling a good story, whether it's horror or crime or suspense. And he's been doing it for many years. One of my favorites of his is All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By which combines Southern Gothic and Voodoo into an excellent pulpy novel that you owe it to yourself to check out if you're a horror fan. The Captors is unlike that novel, in that there is not a whiff of the supernatural to be found in its pages. Instead, it's psychological cray-cray, involving a wealthy but messed up family, a beautiful young woman, her fucked up friends and erotic shenanigans slopped all up in the house.

I've had this one on my shelf of unread books (that's the one sagging dangerously to the point of collapse!) for a long time. It's an early one by Farris, first published way back in 1969. Its story takes place in the summer of 1968, which I hear tell was quite a tumultuous year in America. No doubt, this story reflects the anxieties felt then with the war and upheaval and the seemingly impossible to cross generation gap. It tells what happens when you have a group of unbalanced and drugged up college students who take it upon themselves to claim vengeance on a symbol of the One-Percenters who've made a good living feeding of the world's unrest. A twisted game of Eat the Rich is in the offing. Wrap these ingredients up into the kidnapping of a pretty rich girl, and you have the plot of this novel. It reminded me a lot of the real life Patty Hearst kidnapping, which didn't occur until a few years after this novel was published. I expected something of a similar outcome here, sort of an erotic Stockholm Syndrome page-turner, but man, was I wrong.

"In a half-crazed and volatile world, they're allowed to sell arms and encourage aggression by doing so. If it's in our power to eliminate, completely, a source of human suffering, then we're justified, we're compelled to do it. The act of murder then becomes ethical. In a religious sense, it's holy."

I've thought about how much I could tell you of the plot without giving anything away. I hate spoiling stories for others, and this one has too many twists going for it that divulging them here would ruin the fun in reading this book. I will say it takes its time getting going. It's a slow burn of a novel for the first half, giving you the feel of the characters and their relationships with each other, instead of high drama and noise. That plays to the novel's suspense in the last half of the book. You'll get the violence and killing you've come for, but you have to be patient.

I've read several of John Farris's novels now, and I have no hesitation in recommending his books to genre fans. As with most of his books, this one can be easily had on Kindle. I've rarely seen it used, but I've seen a number of his other novels out there on dusty bookstore shelves. That's most of the fun in enjoying these old books, discovering that nothing is really new under the sun, and that your fears have already been experienced by others before you.

Deadly Edge - Richard Stark

Whatever Manny was high on--and it was clear he'd been taking some sort of drug--the peak had apparently passed during his time in the bedroom, leaving him now in a pleasant cloudy afterglow, his mind turning slowly and coming up with strange materials from the bottom of his skull. 

Berkley, 1974

One of the things that gives me pleasure is knowing that I've got more Parker novels to read. I've read about half of them now, all out of order, and have loved them all. There is nothing like entering the hardboiled world of the Parker novels to remind me of why I love the genre so much. Deadly Edge from 1971 is no exception. Richard Stark (Donald Westlake) holds true to the formula of previous Parker novels. Set up a job, complete it, divide the loot, and clean up the resulting mess that ensues. Parker is a cold-blooded professional, a man of few words, showing no emotion, and is absolutely no one to screw with.

In Deadly Edge, Parker has assembled a team of heist men to rob a rock concert. The first 3rd of the novel is spent detailing the heist with clockwork precision and detail. Parker and his partners Keegan, Briley and Morris hack their way into the concert venue through the roof. With every step of the job worked out in advance they're able to get in, steal the receipts, and out again without anyone getting hurt. Yeah, they'll have to tie up a few people, threaten a few lives, but the money is all they're after. Parker has made it his business to only work with professionals. Amateurs, hot heads, and punks have a bad way of screwing things up and costing lives. And this job goes down like a perfectly executed recipe. All that is left is for Parker and his partners is to split the take and go their separate ways.

Only something has gone wrong. Parker and his gang return to their hideout to discover that a 5th member of their team, an old timer named Berridge who decided to back out of the job due to bad nerves, has been left dead on the bathroom tiles, his skull caved in with a plumber's wrench.

From there, the novel shifts to Parker at home with his new girlfriend, Claire. She's just purchased a new house for her and Parker to share on his time off between jobs. She knows that Parker will never be domesticated, but hopes that their home together will be a refuge from his other life.

He went on to tell her the whole story, from beginning to end. He left out only two things: the names of the people he was with, because they wouldn't mean anything to her, and the discovery of Berridge's dead body in the house afterward. 

It's shortly after Parker has moved in with Claire that he gets word that Keegan is trying to reach him. Parker is disturbed that Keegan should try to contact him so soon after the job, and decides that he'll go to him in person to see what he wants. The murder of Berridge after the concert job has left unanswered questions. Maybe Keegan has learned something important. Turns out that Parker's hunch regarding Keegan was right. He did know something. Only he's never going talk again. Berridge's killer has come for Keegan. It's clear to Parker that someone with a sadistic flavor for torture and murder is after the team that knocked over the rock concert. And soon, they'll be coming for Parker and Claire. And so, my friends, we're off into Parker's World of violence and revenge.

I can't recommend these novels enough. They're all available again, after many years of only getting found in libraries and used bookstores. Stark's style is economic and lean. No literary tricks and self-indulgence going on here. Suspenseful and ruthless, these novels are some of the best in the world of crime literature.

Dhalgren - Samuel R. Delany

From the edge of the sidewalk, three-quarters of the disk was visible above the houses. The clouds dulled it enough to squint at, but it went up, covering the roofs, and up, and up, and up. What they could see of it filled half the visible sky. And, Kid realized, half of the sky is huge! But that fell away into impossibility. Or unvertifiability, anyway. The rim was a broil of gold. Everything was like burning metal.

Bantam Books, January 1975

Dhalgren, by Samuel Delany was an undertaking. This is a book that pops up from time to time on lists of difficult novels, long novels, cult novels, whatever. It has crossed my orbit for many years, the first time being in 1979 when I was in 10th grade and a history teacher in high school gave me his copy. I didn't have what it took then to finish it, and it moved in my collection through the years to finally getting lost somewhere in the middle of the road in someplace I shacked up in. But this year I finally decided it's a book I should give a go at reading. Just to say I did it. 

Published in 1974 (or so) this is Delany's look at the 60s in a long (long!) long-winded novel of an amnesiac and possible mental patient who enters the city of Bellona and lives among its outcast residents. Known only as The Kid, our hero has sex, writes poetry, runs a gang, has sex, helps a family move, talks about poetry, has threesomes, and...Yes, this means there is a lot of talking and sex in the novel. The city of Bellona is a terrific creation. It burns, its streets and parks shift inexplicably in relation, buildings crumble, stores remain stocked, its population is migratory, and time inside is relative. The passage of years is meaningless, the measure of time is pointless. Things move forward to refract inward. Society is broken down among straights, gays, men, women, gangs, recluses, whites, blacks and racial tensions and mutual survival. Kid crosses currents with each layer through the novel, and is corrupt or insane or...Well this is left to the reader to determine. 

Since this is the 60s within a drop of water under an 800 page lens, refracted through a prism and reflected from a mirror there is one omission that I couldn't help noticing. That being the Vietnam War. Or maybe that war is the burning ruins of Bellona and the roving Scorpions therein? 

A lot has been made of the sex in the novel. I didn't mind it, wasn't bothered by it, and think that sex would have been more shocking to Sci-Fi readers in 1974 than in the 21st century.

What I could have skipped? Well that would be some of the mind-numbing long passages that detail the mundane routines of people interacting. Lifting a cup, turning a bedsheet, moving a box, putting on pants, repeating questions. All the things that editors would slash from a manuscript today. I'll give that it's there for a reason, and I'll accept that Delany deliberately made this novel an effort to finish. Some readers don't mind that. Other readers will toss the book aside. 

If you came here looking for answers I'm sorry to disappoint. 

Vineland - Thomas Pynchon

"I'm not gonna forget," Zoyd vowed, "fuck 'em. While we had it, we really had some fun."

"And they never forgave us," Mucho went to the stereo and put on The Best of Sam Cooke, volumes 1 and 2, and they sat together and listened, both of them this time, to the sermon, one they knew and felt their hearts comforted by, though outside spread the lampless wastes, the unseen paybacks, the heartless power of the scabland garrison state the green free America of their childhoods even then was turning into.

Penguin Books, 1991

So let's see if I get this all straight here, In the mid 60's Zoyd Wheeler and his buddies in Gordita Beach have a psychedelic surf combo named The Corvairs gigging around the Inland Empire. Somewhere near El Paso, on one of their gigs, Zoyd hooks up with Frenesi Gates who is on the lam, kinda sorta, from a turn in a militant anti-establishment hippie gang known as the 24 fps, They were something of a documentary film group who liked to stir up shit on college campuses and film it happening. Frenesi had a major role in turning the formerly uptight buttoned down College of the Surf into its own self contained nation called The People's Republic of Rock and Roll. This came about by the seemingly innocuous introduction of a joint shared between two students, whose eyes were opened at once onto the oppressively fascist Nixonian truth of their USA, and fueled somewhat by popular professor of mathematics, Weed Atman. Frenesi and Weed have a hot affair of sorts going on the side, but unknown to Frenesi's comrades in the 24 fps, Frenesi has been also ensnared by the mesmeric Brock Vond, a federal prosecutor who has made it his mission to eradicate hippies and their drugs permanently from the landscape. Brock Vond seems to have the inexhaustible backings of the government behind him, giving him free reign to use whatever means needed to accomplish his mission. Frenisi, thanks to Brock's sexual manipulation, is something of a double agent until she goes off the grid and runs into Zoyd.

But our pal Zoyd's got his own issues. He's been set up by DEA federale Hector Zuniga to turn stoolie on Gordita Beach's marijuana supplier. Zoyd and Frenesi tangle briefly before she's swept into hiding by Brock Vonn. Frenesi's pals in the 24 fps include DL Chastain, who herself is a female ninja (yes, a lot like Uma Thurman's character in Kill Bill) who is later lured into a bizarre assassination attempt on Brock Vond in Japan by Ralph Wayvone, a sort of nefarious millionaire with connections to the underworld. DL Chastain will pose as a Japanese schoolgirl prostitute and seduce Brock Vond into a compromising situation wherein she'll deliver a Vibrating Palm death-blow on him, from which he'll live approximately one year before dropping dead of a heart attack. Brock Vond gets hip to Wayvone's scheme to kill him and arranges a substitute patsy to meet DL Chastain in her slutty little schoolgirl disguise by kidnapping Takeshi Fumimota and sending him into The Gentlemen's Tits and Ass Club in his stead. Before getting kidnapped by Brock and his agents, Takeshi has his hands full investigating the total destruction of Chipco by what appears to be a giant dinosaur-like taloned footprint, not unlike Japan's favorite celluloid monster Gojira! But instead, Takeshi and DL tangle and Takeshi gets laid the Vibrating Palm on him. Wayvone, realizing Brock has outsmarted him, whisks DL back to the U.S. Takeshi follows her, after discovering he's got about a year to live thanks to the deadly Vibrating Palm that DL laid upon him.

Where does this leave Zoyd? Remember Zoyd? He's the sap in the surfadelic combo who had the bad luck to fall in love with Frenesi Gates, who has left him high and dry with a daughter named Prairie before disappearing. Brock Vond eventually hooks up with Zoyd and frames him with a shit-ton of marijuana. Or was it Hector Zuniga who framed Zoyd? Shit, now I can't remember myself, and I just read the damn book about a week ago! Anyway, Zoyd's looking at something like 900 years in prison if he doesn't come clean on Frenesi's whereabouts. 'Course he doesn't know, and neither does anyone else.

Now dig, all this is told in retrospect of sorts through various characters in the present day, in this case 1984 in Reagan's America. It's come to a head because Zoyd has been paid a visit from Hector Zuniga again after all these years since the wild and crazy hippie 60's. Now Zoyd is older, mellower, sadder and living on mental disability checks. Only thing is, to keep these checks coming in Zoyd has to perform some kind of public act of insanity once a year, like jumping through a plate-glass window for TV cameras. Hector reappears in Zoyd's life, looking for Frenesi Gates, with word of warning that Brock Vond is back on the scene. But Hector is now addicted to his own narcotic, The Tube, meaning that one-eyed monster sitting in household living rooms across the U.S.A. Hector quotes Star Trek, Gilligan's Island and The Brady Bunch indiscriminately as he carries out some quest to film a documentary on the drug-fueled 60's produced by one Sid Liftoff and which he hopes he can get Frenesi Gates to star in. The Tube is this ubiquitous force that's got Frenesi masturbating to Ponch and Jon in CHiPs as though "some Cosmic Fascist had spliced in a DNA sequence requiring this form of seduction and initiation into the dark joys of social control."

This all goes to show that Vineland is Pynchon somewhere between the grandiose chaos of Gravity's Rainbow and the loopiness of Inherent Vice. The connection is Gordita Beach, where Doc Sportello himself probably caught a few gigs of The Corvairs with Shasta Fay at his side. Mucho Maas from The Crying of Lot 49 makes a cameo as well. I think that V. had a guy jumping through plate-glass window for kicks but I can't be sure. I can't be sure of anything anymore...

There is a lot in Vineland to admire. The plot is Pynchonesque, obviously, but never too hard to follow. There are dense slabs of prose that mine the craziness and contradictions of America and freedom and growing old and love and loss and dreams. There are puns and songs and movies and TV, and there is warmth and soul throughout. I'd recommend it.

The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon

She looked down a slope, needing to squint for the sunlight, onto a vast sprawl of houses which had grown up all together, like a well tended crop from the dull brown earth; and she thought of the time she'd opened a transistor radio to replace a battery and seen her first printed circuit. The ordered swirl of houses and streets, from this high angle, sprang at her now with the same unexpected astonishing clarity as the circuit card had. Though she knew even less about radios than about Southern Californians, there were to both outward patterns a hieroglyphic sense of concealed meaning, of an intent to communicate. 

Bantam Books 12th Printing

This is the second reading of Thomas Pynchon's novel The Crying of Lot 49 for me. The first time was in college almost 30 years ago when I was too busy to let all of the novels I was reading at the time really make an impact. It's one of those English major reads that students had to go through to get their degrees. It's also one of Pynchon's most accessible novels, and my recommendation for the Pynchon novel newcomers should start with.

Consider this before starting though. You know how it is when you're going along through day to day life, then you happen to notice that odd little thing that's out of place, whatever it is, that's been there the whole time but you've just never paid any attention to it before? You think about it, remark upon it to your friends, and then shrug it off. But then you see it again in another part of the city, or hear it mentioned in a coffee shop, and soon you see the trail of this very thing everywhere, that it's infected everything around you in a subtle way, daring you to pursue it, to pull the threads of meaning loose from it, but the more you try, the vaster it becomes until...

The novel follows a suburban wife Oedipa Maas after she's named co-executor of her former lover Pierce Inverarity's vast estate. Oedipa is now married to a DJ named Wendell (Mucho) Maas. Oedipa faces her duties with vague consternation and arrives in San Narciso at a roadside motel named Echo Courts which lies under the tall highway sign featuring a nymphet (yes, you're supposed to think of Lolita when seeing the term nymphet). There she meets Metzger, lawyer and co-executor who will be working with her on Inverarity's vast estate. Metzger has a deep understanding of all the property and holdings and investments that Pierce Inverarity controlled. He's also a former child actor and so good-looking that within hours both he and Oedipa are bumping fuzzies after after an exploding can of hair spray wreaks havoc in her motel room which resulted from a stripping game made up of a bet on the ending of one of Metzger's old movies that just happens to be playing on the TV. You got all that? Because that's pretty much the kind of looping zaniness you're going to deal with when reading this, or any other novel by Pynchon. It's a love hate, patience or not, kind of thing with Pynchon's plots. But since this novel clocks in at only 138 pages, you can take it. And doing so you'll get rewarded with some really cool conspiracy stuff involving an underground mail system, a Jacobean play of murder and revenge, a sinister entity known as Tristero, a muted post horn symbol showing up in the most bizarre places, heaping doses of paranoia, LSD, a Nazi disguised as a therapist, and a Beatleesque band of pot smoking mop-tops and their sexy teenage girlfriends. You also get mythic men in black, entropy, gay bars, a play within a novel, nocturnal wanderings into the seedy side of San Francisco, a used bookstore that holds more clues to a vast network of a society off the grid, or a big fat grand fucking hoax played on our heroine Oedipa as she follows a thread of conspiracy that seems everywhere around her. In addition, the short novel is rife with references to TV shows, songs, and mores of the 60's.

In a short novel like this, giving much of the plot away would ruin the fun for anyone who may be interested in reading it. Is it all a farce? Or is it something far more dark and sinister going on. The last paragraph of the novel could be interpreted in different ways. Forget about Gravity's Rainbow, or V. or even Inherent Vice. Yeah, those books get the spotlight from the intelligentsia but let's face it, a vast majority of people who start Gravity's Rainbow will never finish it. Pick up The Crying of Lot 49 instead and you'll get Pynchon's themes without having to tax the noodle, and your patience.

Saturday Vinyl - Ultimate Spinach

ULTIMATE SPINACH is growing...expanding and exploding with myriad consciousness, laughter, feelings, thoughts, ideas...Barbara looking out at the world through a pierced retina, always the Jolly Green Earth Mother to us all...Richard continues his forever search for the eternal black horse...while Keith races, enlightened, out of the nineteenth century looking like a modern Diogenes on a ten-speed bicycle.

MGM Records SE-4518 1968

Yes! You're in for a heaping dose of 60's psychedelia here when you got liner notes that start like that! Ultimate Spinach's first album is one of those records that I've never gotten tired of playing. Probably because I don't play it too often. But when I do, I always enjoy it.

Released in January of 1968 their 1st album is probably their best known and most successful. It actually got as high as number 34 on the Billboard 200. Coming out of Boston and marketed as part of the "Bosstown Sound" intended as the east-coast response to the San Francisco sound, the band was Ian Bruce-Douglas on vocals, player of most of the instruments, songwriter and guru of the band. Well maybe guru is a fancy way of calling him the band's leader. He also wrote the liner notes for this album. Lengthy liner notes that continue in style to what you have above. The other members were Barbara Hudson on vocals and guitar, Keith Lahteinen on drums, Richard Nese on bass, and Geoffrey Winthropon on guitar and sitar.

The record is composed of nine cuts, with each song explained, well kind of explained, in the liner notes. I'm sure I've read the songs' notes, but really, one doesn't have to read them to enjoy the songs. It's the usual 60's tropes here, and nothing earthshaking. Youthful earnestness and anti-establishment rebellion combined with poetic angst swimming in a lot of keyboards and guitar, and you get the idea. That said, the songs, all of them, are pretty good if you're a fan of psychedelic music.

Gateway sleeve, liner notes by Ian Bruce-Douglas

Later in the year, Ultimate Spinach released a second album, but personnel changes and burnout were dampening the thrill. Psychedelic music travels best in short and brilliant journeys. It's not something you're going to pack for a long trip with. In 1969 the band released a third album which crashed right out of the gate. By the end of the 60's the band was no more.

You can check out their songs in all the usual places. I've seen their first two albums occasionally in the used record stores. I screwed up not buying the second one when I had the chance, but it'll show up again some day. As for their third record, well...I think I'll stick to the ones the band liked.

The Coven - Carter Brown

She put her drink down, then came up onto her feet without hurrying. There was a brief hiatus while she unbuttoned the belt tied tight around her waist, then she slid the black silk robe down over her creamy shoulders and let it drop to the floor. Underneath she was only wearing bikini-sized white silk briefs that straddled the curves of her hips tighter than a second skin. I watched, fascinated, as she cupped the taut swell of her breasts in both hands and lifted them slightly, so their swollen tips pointed directly at me. 

Signet - April !971 - Cover by Robert McGinnis

The Coven sports a cover by Robert McGinnis that probably deserved a slightly better novel to go with it. I'm not saying it's a bad novel, because it isn't. It is a fast, entertaining romp about a group of "hippies" with too much money and too much time on their hands who turn to satanic rituals to get their kicks. But it leaves you with that feeling you might have after consuming a can of Pringles by yourself. Pizza flavored Pringles at that.

Rick Holman is a sort of Hollywood private dick, or fixer, or something of that nature, who is hired by an affected British actor named Hector Mulvane. Hector is married to a young and hot little twist named Brenda, who does things like answer the door in a bikini while sipping a martini. Mulvane wants Holman to find out what his two rotten offspring, Kirk and Amanda, are up to. Kirk and Amanda are the sort of Hollywood brats who like making trouble and getting attention. Hector Mulvane is worried that his two kooky kids are running around California cooking up some sort of scandal that'll sully his upcoming knighthood. Amanda has let a number of photos get around showing her in the buff while performing a pseudo-satanic-witchcraft ceremony. Hector thinks her brother Kirk is somehow behind the photos. Kirk is a headcase who has a history of drugs and violence behind him. Kirk was also Brenda's boyfriend before she dumped him to marry Hector. It's all quite sordid, don't you know...

Brenda suggests that Holman look up Amanda's pal Marie Pilgrim. Marie is one of those loopy sexpot starlet wannabes who run around Hollywood with Kirk and Amanda. Holman pays a visit to Marie and finds Kirk hanging around her pad smoking joints and playing the sullen and troubled lothario bit, which includes slapping chicks when they make with the whining. Kirk claims he has no idea where his sister Amanda could be, but he'll do Holman a favor and go find her. He splits, leaving Holman and Marie alone long enough to banter with each other (and the reader) into fits of sexual desire before agreeing to go look for Amanda together.

They all end up in a town named San Lopar, where they meet a foppish eccentric named Pete Cronin. Pete and the gang were all pals at one point. Now Pete takes to hanging out in his weird mansion painting disturbing pictures of death and violence. Pictures so dark and depraved that he refuses to show them to just anyone, but only to people he deems worthy of appreciating his perverse talent. Also in the mix is a beach-bum pothead named Ed Koncius. Ed hangs out in his beach-pad, in a slack-jawed stupor thanks to the copious amounts of pot he consumes. Ed also had a thing going with our twisted brujita, Amanda Mulvane...Remember, Amanda Mulvane and her tarty little pics that started this whole thing?

Well, before you know it, Holman is rapped on the noggin and awakes to witness a satanic ritual featuring red-robed participants and one naked Marie Pilgrim splayed out on an altar surrounded by black candles. It's all too fuzzy for Holman, because he's been drugged and then blindfolded before the ceremony ends. The next morning, a woozy Holman and Marie Pilgrim awake to find that someone has slit Ed Koncius's throat. For Marie, it's a sickening reminder of another ceremony that went bad, leaving a young chick named Shirley Rillman, naked and dead on the beach thanks to a slit throat. Who killed Ed, who killed Shirley Rillman, and where are Kirk and Amanda?

Ah, it's hippies, it's drugs, it's satanic rituals and murder! All the things that sent Ma and Pa Jones into apoplectic fits of fear and loathing back in the late 60's.

Carter Brown's novels are kind of a gas. I've only read a few but I've enjoyed them just fine. I'm sure you will be seeing more of them here in the future.

Ellie - Herbert Kastle

So, really, what was so special about Ellie? What could happen with Ellie except more of what had happened in bed at the Forest Park Hotel? I mean there wasn’t an eighteen year old secretary who could speak better English than she could, didn’t have more polish than she had, and didn’t come off more like a lady than she did—and couldn’t, if convinced she should, do as much as Ellie could sexually. In fact what woman couldn’t?

But when I met her at La Guardia, I felt my insides jumping as she strolled lazily down the ramp. And when I walked with her to the luggage pickup and held her hand and saw the airport workers eyeing her, I felt again that this was the most beautiful little chick in all the world.

Dell, April 1974

I think all of us know that couple who can’t seem to live without each other, yet whenever they get together they turn into complete psychos. If they’d never met each other they would have gone through life on a fairly even keel, but since first hooking up have gone completely off the deep end for each other. And I’m not talking in a good way either. I’m talking full tilt psycho-boogie screaming downward spiral cray-cray! Well that’s just a taste of what you have with Nick and Ellie in Herbert Kastle’s novel Ellie. These two make Sid and Nancy look like the Pleasantville homecoming king and queen.

There isn’t really a whole lot of plot to delve into here. It’s a story of boy-meets-girl, boy and girl get together and screw their silly heads off, boy decides he must have girl, girl coyly agrees to stay with boy, and mayhem ensues.

Nick Leib, is in St. Louis on a business trip when on a whim he decides to by a coat in a men’s clothing store. Working in the store is Ellie McBaren, a twenty year old girl in a short skirt. Ellie is common and simple, attractive in a girl next door kind of way, only a couple years removed from a bubblegum chewing teenager with poor grammar skills. She is uncultured, unrefined and has a careless way of revealing too much ass under her short skirt, but Nick doesn’t care. He’s decided that he’s got to have Ellie, whatever it takes.

Nick is one of those self-described studs who can pretty much land any chick he wants, with his Porche and Manhattan apartment and bigshot salary. We get the whole shebang from Nick’s point-of-view and, believe me, by the time you’re done with the novel, there is not enough soap and hot water to wash off Nick’s crummy perspective on things. You want to get your fill of the many ways you can drop the C-word to describe a girl? Just hang out with Nick Leib for a couple chapters and you’ll get more than enough. For that matter, you want to get an idea how to fuck with some poor schmuck’s head? Well, dig how Ellie really lays the headgames down with Nick, and believe me, you’ll have a Master’s degree worth. And all that’s just for the first half of the novel. We haven’t really begun to sink with Nick and Ellie into the depths of insanity disguised as obsessive lust. In fact, obsessive lust is about as tame as puppy-love in the hearts of these two head-cases. But do yourself a favor, if you ever meet a couple like Nick and Ellie. Don't walk, but run away, as fast as you can. Especially if you'd like to carry on your life without private detectives, hit men, rapists, Molotov cocktails, sleazy doctors, and lecherous punks fouling up your scenery.  

So, did I like the novel, you wonder? Well…that’s a tough one. There is no denying how readable, how well written, it is.  Bret Easton Ellis, for all his success and fame, doesn’t come close to pushing your face into the depravity Nick and Ellie get off on. So, yes, I did like the novel. But “like” isn’t really the right word for the experience. It’s more that I admired the novel for what it set out to do. There’s no way anyone in their right mind could relate to Nick or Ellie. Yes, I suppose one could empathize for the passion they have, but only to a point. I’ve had my share of crushes, but they never went past the embarrassment of driving past the block that the object of my unrequited affections lived on. Hopefully that goes the same for most of us. It also made me glad that my relationships have all been relatively normal. Yeah, hooking up with that crazy chick does have its undeniable allure, for a little while…but crazy has a way of rubbing off on you. It’s fun for a weekend, but don’t plan on taking it to the altar. 

Cult Movie Classic - The Big Cube

Sorry about the delay in posts. I set a schedule for myself to do at least one post a week, then failed. Like all great intentions...oh well. At least I've gotten some good books finished in the meantime, in addition to another column for Dark Eclipse which you might want to check out if you're so inclined.

I've been meaning to throw out a post for a pretty cool movie I saw some weeks back on TCM. It's The Big Cube, from 1969 and stars Lana Turner, Karin Mossberg, George Chakiris, Richard Egan and Daniel O'Herlihy. It was directed by Tito Davison.

Karin Mossberg in The Big Cube

The big names in the flick are clearly Lana Turner and George Chakiris, and both play their roles to the hilt. Well, at least George Chakiris does. Maybe Ms Turner was cashing a check, but still, she is enjoyable to watch. As is Karin Mossberg for reasons which are readily apparent in the photo here.

Lana Turner stars as Adriana, a stage actress who retires from the stage to marry Charles Winthrop, played by Daniel O'Herlihy. Winthrop is one of those wealthy cats who makes his living flying around the world making millions. His daughter Lisa (Karin Mossberg) fresh in from school in Europe, takes an instant dislike to Adriana. Adriana is nothing but kind to Lisa, and fervently hopes the two can get along swimmingly. Instead, Lisa immediately falls into the sordid world of bored rich kids and their squalid kicks. She meets a real charmer named Johnny Allan, who notices the swanky jewels on Lisa's lovely body and decides his ship has finally come to port. Daddy is none too pleased with Lisa's savage friends and makes it loud and clear to her. But Charles Winthrop is quickly jettisoned from the story due to a boating accident. He leaves his fortune to Lisa, naming Adriana as executor of the estate. The only catch is that Lisa is not to marry her boyfriend Johnny. Seems old Winthrop has seen right through slimy Johnny's intentions with Lisa. Johnny (George Chakiris) is a medical student of dubious reputation. When not bedding his new rich girlfriend, he gets his kicks dosing people with LSD. It's all mad fun! Everything is all hunky-dory until he learns of the the condition that Lisa not marry him if she expects to inherit a dime of Daddy's wealth. He quickly convinces Lisa that everything is Adriana's fault. If Adriana had never come into the picture, why Lisa would have her fortune and they could be married. Damn that Adriana, damn her! Only one thing the lovebirds can do. That is, dose Adriana with LSD and drive her batshit. Lisa, bless her pretty (empty) little head, quickly falls into line, and together she and Johnny commence with a campaign of psychological warfare on kind and trusting Adriana.

There are plenty of campy, psychedelic trippy scenes in The Big Cube to enjoy, along with a nifty little strip-tease act by one of Lisa's pals. Karin Mossberg is lovely to look at throughout the movie, but can't really compete in the acting department with the likes of Chakiris and Turner. Still, it's kind of a fun movie to check out. I understand it's available in a camp classic box-set from Warner Bros. I've also seen it pop up on TCM a few times, so it shouldn't be too hard to catch at some point.

The Deep End - Joseph Hayes

"If any of you gentlemen become legislators, I hope you'll get a law passed requiring every female infant's birth date be tattooed on her belly just below the navel at birth."

England must be the country of choice for a wife to go to, so that she can leave her husband home to make a complete and utter drunken jackass of himself for the first crazy little twist that twitches her butt at him. For the second time in as many months I've been presented with this setup in a novel dealing with one man’s exposure to a world in which he has no place, leading to his ultimate fall. The first was John D. MacDonald’s potboiler, Clemmie. Now we have 1967’s The Deep End by Joseph Hayes. Below is a picture of my ratty paperback copy. 

Bantam Paperback edition May 1968

Joseph Hayes is probably known mostly for his novel The Desperate Hours, which was made into the 1955 movie of the same name, starring Humphey Bogart and Fredric March, then remade in the early 90’s with Mickey Rourke.

The Deep End is a similar setup, except that instead of an escaped convict invading the suburban castle of an innocent family, we have freaky hippies invading an upper-class Manhattan apartment belonging to a lawyer. Thanks to Manson and his gang, the idea of hippies encroaching on to middle-class turf must have been really terrifying for folks in the late 60’s, considering how often hippies were used as plot tools. Hippies were the scape-goats for many of society’s failings then. They represented everything that wasn't honest and decent and American in those days. Drugs and sex and pinko ideals, just like our communists enemies promised to us: “We will conquer you through your children.”

Adam Wyatt is our hero in this novel. He is a man of character, responsibility, righteousness, and goose-steps to the conservative line. His wife, Lydia, has flown off to London to care for an ailing mother. Their daughter, Anne, is grown and married to a middle-class stiff of her own named Glenn and is living in the country. Adam returns home to Manhattan after a weekend of visiting Anne and Glenn. He's bored, restless and vaguely horny. He comes home to what he naturally assumes to be his empty apartment, only to find a somewhat kooky chick named Jenny waiting for him there. Jenny tells Adam that he gave her the glad eye at the neighborhood pub, and that she’s only there because he wants her to be. She calls him Sam, twitches her hot little ass at him, immediately disrobes, and before you can say the Pledge of Allegiance, Adam is laying the pipe to her. Sure, he feels a little bit guilty for cheating on Lydia. But Lydia is partly to blame for leaving him alone, he reasons. Besides, guys like Adam are somewhat disposed to affairs, as part of their role as stalwart heroes of their nation.

After Jenny and Adam bop between the sheets, Adam goes out to the kitchen for a drink, only to discover a long-haired bearded cat in a fringed leather vest cooking dinner. The guy introduces himself as Wilby, and congratulates Adam on his little conquest of Jenny's reserves. Wilby quickly assumes the role of an anti-establishment blithering radical, throwing all of Adam’s beliefs and mores back in his face. And this is about where the novel has pushed its credibility a bit too far. Adam, is one of those annoying characters who carries the plot forward only by his sheer irrationality. There are numerous points that your average Joe would have got a neighbor, the cops, the building superintendent, anyone, to throw Jenny and Wilby out on their unwashed asses. Instead, Adam entertains their invasion of his castle by demanding they explain themselves, and that they promptly depart of their own volition. Wilby quickly emasculates Adam’s authority by knocking him on his can. From that point on, Adam is pretty much putty in Wilby’s hands. They tell Adam they’ll leave only after he lays some bread on them first. “Bread?” Adam demands. “What do you mean bread? Is that like money?”

Besides being a dick, and a cheater, and a pompous ass, Adam is unbelievably thick in the head about the world around him, much like the Pope would be at an orgy. Wilby rants about justice, the Vietnam War, religion, the law, you name it, as Adam can only recite the kind of platitudes you’d expect from someone as square as he is. Within two days, Adam is questioning everything he’s held as the truth, snapping at his law partners, accusing acquaintances of siccing Wilby and Jenny on him, all the while acting like fool and drinking himself into blind stupors. And on top of all that, he still can’t seem to resist Jenny’s nubile charms in the sack. It’s an interesting dissection of the mid-century White American Male at the mercy of a world he’s completely over his head in. And, it’s impossible to root for him.

In no time flat, Adam is an accomplice to a planned abortion for Jenny. He’s also extorted by Wilby for sleeping with a girl under the legal age. By day two of the novel, Adam is going through life in an alcoholic fog, striking out at friends, questioning his believes, drinking himself blind, and adopting Wilby’s tics and speech patterns as his own. He’s literally off "the deep end" as described in the novel’s title. And that’s only halfway into this “four days of utter hell” that’s promised in the blurb on the back cover.

An interesting novel, Dad. Hippie dialog can be excruciating if not handled right, but Hayes has a good ear for how people speak. It's a bit too long maybe, but never boring. It's not very believable at times, but has its moments and is a nifty little comeuppance for all those arrogant stiffs that have all the answers in life without even knowing the questions, click!