Vic Valentine: Lounge Lizard for Hire by Will Viharo

(pb; 2018: eighth book in the Vic Valentine series)

From the back cover

“My Voodoo Valentine? Vic Valentine has finally retired from the private eye racket. And since his beautiful, new bi-sexual, black belt-burlesque-dancer bride, Ava Margarita Valentina Valdez Valentine, who may also be a witch or a vampire or both, has a mysterious and possibly nefarious source of seemingly endless wealth, he no longer walks dogs for income, either. Vic is finally living the life of his wildest dreams! Until the Universe sucker-punches him yet again, and it suddenly melts into a noir nightmare. . .

“First a Yakuza hitman from Mrs.Valentine’s past shows up in Seattle with a score to settle. She conjures demons from another dimension to not only protect them, but to spice up their sex life (or hers, anyway). The ghost of Vic’s dead friend Doc Schlock still haunts him, literally. His old pal Ivar the sailor statue starts talking, and walking. And then there’s the doppelganger of a young Vic suddenly popping up here and there around town, setting Vic up for a showdown with his younger self.

“But no matter what happens next, the show must go on.”

Review

Fans of David Lynch, werewolves, Mexican wrestling films, vampires, yakuza flicks, actor Christian Slater and hypersexual violence may find themselves reveling in this surrealistic tale, where one reality swirls into another what-the-FRELL alternate reality, sucking readers further into Vic’s headworlds, imagined or real.

This is an excellent, gory, sexually explicit neo-psychedelic pulp novel, much like its predecessor, Vic Valentine: International Man of Misery, although Lounge ups the crazy what-is-real ante to the triple nth degree. While this works as a standalone story, readers familiar with previous Vic Valentine works (starting with Love Stories Are Too Violent For Me) might enjoy Lounge more, as Viharo spin-cycles through a lot of the characters, elements, storylines and themes that formed the first seven books in this series and other books penned by this distinctive, consistently fascinating author. 

Followed by Vic Valentine: Space Cadet.

Vic Valentine: International Man of Misery by Will Viharo

(hb; 2017: seventh book in the Vic Valentine series. Published by Thrillville Press.)

From the back cover

"Vic Valentine, Private Eye is back in business -- as a dog walker. A really, really bad one. While drunk in a dive bar one rainy Seattle night, one of his canine clients tied up outside goes missing. The twisted trail leads him from Vancouer to Minneapolis to Houston to Mexico City and then all the way down to Costa Rica. Along the way he encounters nefarious businessmen, dangerous drug dealers, tropical cocktails, flesh-eating zombies, voracious vampire women, and a luscious Latina bombshell that may or may not turn out to be the long lost love of his life."


Review

International is a dark, delightful pulp novel. In it, Viharo weaves wild elements and sub-genres into an addictive, fleet-footed and hallucinogenic read: sexploitation, P.I. intrigue, conspiracies, zombies, dog-centered writing, vampires, divine(?) intervention (hello, Ivar!) and – as promised – international travel. Of course, all of this is punctuated with Viharo’s recurring characters, quippy-sometimes-silly humor, and an awareness of life’s underlying melancholy. 

What makes International one of my favorite Viharo books is how, over the course of seven books, he has evolved Vic’s character by making him wiser, even as Vic continues to embrace his inner freak-up.

As is often the case with Viharo’s works, this a heady brew, excellent and timely work, one worth owning. If you have not read earlier Vic Valentine novels, International works as an entertaining, stand-alone read. Followed by Vic Valentine: Lounge Lizard for Hire.

Hard-Boiled Heart by Will Viharo

(hb; 2015: sixth book in the Vic Valentine series)

From the back cover:

"Older but hardly wiser, Vic Valentine finds himself in hot water again when he becomes embroiled with a movie star. Hollywood bad boy Charlie wants to make a film about the anachronistic private eye's tumultuous life. But when the alcoholic actor becomes a murder suspect, both Charlie's career and Vic's dreams are put on hold, forcing the duo to flee the fog of San Francisco for the rainy Pacific Northwest. There, Vic becomes erotically entangled with Raven, a voluptuous but vicious burlesque dancer, and is driven to despair by a supernatural stalker, a mysterious sailor statue named Ivar.

"Follow Vic through the mean streets of Seattle as he copes with middle-aged melancholia and confronts the demons from his past that threaten the guardian angels of his future."


Review:

The especially sharp editing and lightning-quick pacing in Hard-Boiled makes it one of my favorite Viharo books. On top of that -- keeping with his trademark style -- there are a lot of clever quips, real-life locale settings, as well as neo-pulp-worthy characters, deceit, mystery, violence and, of course, Valentine's horn-dog focus, even when confronted with the probability of pernicious death.

Like the rest of the Vic Valentine series, Hard-Boiled is a great read, own it already. Followed by Vic Valentine: International Man of Misery.

#

The first two chapters of Hard-Boiled were originally published in Bachelor Pad magazine, a burlesque-, tiki- and hybrid genre-themed periodical. "Private Dick, Public Enemy" appeared in its Summer 2012 "Nightcap Edition" issue. "Space Needle Fix" appeared in its Summer 2013 "Nightcap Edition #2" issue.

I Lost My Heart in Hollywood / Diary of a Dick, by Will Viharo

(pb; 1995, 2011: fourth and fifth novellas in the Vic Valentine series)


From the back cover:

"I Lost My Heart in Hollywood chronicles the strangest case yet in the so-called career of Vic Valentine, Private Eye, as an unlikely tryst with the B movie scream queen of his dreams, Velma Vale, leads him down a dark, twisted path of paranoia, voyeurism, degradation and death.  The bizarre action heats up even as his burning loneliness and simmering sexual obsessions flare at the forefront of his tormented consciousness, with caution and common sense cooling idly on the backburner.

"Plus!

"Diary of a Dick tells further tantalizing tales of Vic chasing tail while allegedly on the trail of True Love, all the way to New Orleans and back again, as the femme fatales of his past and present suddenly converge with prurient promises of promiscuity.  As always, strings are attached to these erotic escapades, but the ties that bind begin rapidly unraveling, and Vic is left hanging by a thread like a doomed puppet.  The mysteries of love have never been more elusive."


Review:

Lost and Diary read more like sexploitation novellas than straightforward pulp/mystery works, although there's a strong element of mystery (along with deadly violence, Viharo's funny sense of wordplay and lots of lust) in both novellas.  There's also a lightness that wasn't present in the last Vic Valentine novella, the (understandably) grim Romance Takes a Raincheck, making these newer works stand out even more.  And, as with his earlier Vic Valentine stories, the characters, events and other elements that formed the storylines of previous novellas reflect and (further) shape the characters, moods and events of Lost and Diary.

Lost sports a claustrophobic, too-out-there-to-be-coincidental sense of cinematic-scripted conspiracy; Diary reads like a frak-a-licious, possibly life-changing series of carnal conquests.  This, along with Viharo's effective mixing of genres and love of film (which gets plenty of air time in both works), makes for reads that aren't like anything I've read in a while.

These combined fifth and sixth Vic Valentine stories are fun, sometimes chatty (in a character-true way) works - works worth purchasing.

Fate is My Pimp/Romance Takes a Raincheck, by Will Viharo

(pb; 1994, 1995, 2011: second and third novellas in the Vic Valentine series)


From the back cover:

"Fate is My Pimp picks up the torrid trail of Vic Valentine, Private Eye as he traverses the mean streets of San Francisco and beyond in search of a mobster's missing teenage daughter, encountering various voluptuous vixens, a female surf band, and a stalker leaving him mysterious musical messages, all while infiltrating an Elvis-theme commune for runaways, led by a deviously decadent Deacon Rivers.  Follow the further misadventures of this misguided misfit introduced in Love Stories Are Too Violent For Me as he continues looking for love in all the wrong places, and unfortunately for him - finding it.

"Romance Takes a Raincheck finds Vic back on the East Coast, tracking down a lead on his cop father's killer, visiting his mother in an asylum, and reuniting with his high school sweetheart, Dolly Duncan, now married to a doper dentist.  Nothing is what it seems, times and people have changed, and Vic is going to learn the hard way - again - that some bones, and boners, are best left buried."


Review:

Fate and Romance, like the first "Vic Valentine" book (Love Stories), are pop and cinematic nostalgic, with lots of clever dialogue, sex and desperation-soaked action.  Not only that, but there's a clear maturation in Valentine, the perpetually horny, prone-to-self-pity P.I., in these sequels: while he's still reeling here and there, he's less a victim than he was in Love - there's a sense that yeah, he could still get frakked over and die, but if it happens, it will more likely be the result of others' decisions and actions, not his.

What further differentiates Fate and Romance from their source book is their varied tones.  While Love had a neo-pulp surrealistic feel to it, Fate ups the mellow-gold wackiness, with its mood-swing characters, its strange groupings (the Elvis cult) and its over-the-top climax; Romance has an appropriate, directly stated East Coast break-your-bones gravitas. 

Both of these sequels are entertaining, memorable and darkly humorous in their lusty violence.  They're also worth owning. 

Followed by the third and fourth "Vic Valentine" novellas I Lost My Heart in Hollywood and Diary of a Dick (which, like Fate and Romance, have been published in one volume).