Dirty Harry #3: The Long Death by Dane Hartman

(pb; 1981: third novel in the twelve-book Dirty Harry movie tie-in series. Sequel to Dirty Harry #2: Death on the Docks.)

From the back cover

“Someone is grabbing young women from the bars, campuses, and streets of San Francisco and doing unspeakable things to their minds and bodies. Someone is setting up cops against black nationalistsin a violent inter-city war, playing both sides for bloody fools. Someone is looking for deadly trouble when a gorgeous policewoman baits ‘Dirty Harry’ Callahan into a showdown that can only be settled by bare firsts and Magnum lead!”

Review

Eastwood’s Dirty Harry films (numbering five, 1971-88) are not known for their subtlety or cultural sensitivity, although they sneak in brief scenes where Harry Callahan shows humor, understanding and tenderness, between his shooting of odious criminals. The Long Death is no exception to that setup.That said, the patient cruelty of Long’s villains─who are pompous, sadistic or both─is noteworthy, even for a work centering around a dry-wit, San Francisco police officer and his meting out of rough justice. 

Long sports a giallo influence (e.g., its dread-drenched, bizarre, twenty-two-page opening, where a beautiful coed is stalked, raped─mostly in euphemistic phrasing─and further set up for Saw-like torture sessions). Dario Argento’s 1975 film Deep Red is shown in a college classroom while Harry and his partner, Fatso Devlin, fend off a multi-assassin assault, and Wes Craven gets a mention as well (think The Last House on the Left, 1972).

Hartman’s** writing is lean and thrilling, his dialogue sharp and his characters’ backstories effectively sketched out, with over-the-top gunplay and pursuit sequences making up most of its 163 pages. Characters from the first three Dirty Harry films are mentioned (past police partners and his dead wife, Elizabeth). This further, effectively links Long to its source works (Dirty Harry, 1971; Magnum Force, 1973; and The Enforcer, 1976). And I loved Harry’s interactions with his friend, ex-black militant “Big Ed” Mohamid, despite how Hartman─plot-wise─short-changed Mohamid’s character.

The book’s climactic shootout in a gothic, Angel Island mansion is a great capper to a barebones horror flick of a cop novel.

As I noted earlier, Long─published by Men of Action Books─is not a sensitive read (although Harry, fair-minded, shows empathy toward the victimized and the innocent). Long wasn’t a sensitive offering when it was published in 1981, and its brutal worldview could be viewed as more egregious today, although it’s more pre-now “ignorant” than mean-spirited than, say, many of the works of Mickey Spillane. (Beware blind presentism.)

Long is worth reading, if you’re looking for a burn-through, blast-‘em-up-Dirty-Harry book. 

Followed by Dirty Harry #4: Mexico Kill.

[**According to Wikipedia, Dane Hartman is the pen name of “several writers. . . [including] martial arts expert Ric Meyers and Leslie Alan Horvitz.” ]