The Gauntlet by Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack

 

(pb; 1977: movie tie-in novel, based on Butler and Shryack’s screenplay)

 

From the back cover

“He was a cop who ‘got a job done.’

“She was a hooker set up by both the law and the mob to have a job done on her.

“They were two people with nothing left to do but run.”

 

Review

Gauntlet is a fun, comic book-ish movie tie-in that tries to ground its absurd action-fantasy cinematic counterpart in some semblance of reality and largely succeeds. Penned by Butler and Shryack, who also wrote the screenplay, they add small details and background to their lead characters (including a nice meta-crack about “Dirty Harry”), giving some heft to Gauntlet’s leads. Many of its situations, especially in its last quarter, are still ridiculous but they’re less egregious in their execution than in the film, which come as just silly. This book version is worthwhile if you don’t expect too much and are just looking for something violent but relatively light to fill an hour or two. Below is the iconic Boris Vallejo movie poster.

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.” ]

Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett

(hb; 1929)

From the inside flap

“Blackmail runs rampant in a town policed by badged bootleggers in blue who turn a blind eye to protect the Old Man who runs the town.”

Review

Harvest’s narrator/protagonist (an unnamed Continental Op, who also appears in other Hammett works) goes to Personville─nicknamed Poisonville, because of its shady denizens─to investigate a murder, but ends up getting hired to “clean up” the dangerous, lots-of-crime town. He then utilizes some questionable setups to pit some of the big players against each other to achieve said cleansing.

This is a masterful, complex, immediately gripping and fast-moving work, one of the best novels in the pulp genre. Lots of gunplay, clever twists, dead bodies, quotable dialogue and colorful characters─i.e., elements that Hammett excels at─make this one of my all-time favorite crime reads, one worth reading. This one really packs a punch.

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Several films have resulted from this novel, only one of them a Hammett-credited work.

The first, La ciudad maldita, was released in Italy on November 29, 1978. Juan Borsch directed the film, from a screenplay by him and Alberto de Stefanis.

Chet Bakon played OP. Diana Lorys played Dinah. Roberto Camardiel played Sheriff Noonan. Daniel Martin played Max Thaler.

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Other films, which do not credit Red as a source, include:

Yojimbo (1961; director/co-screenwriter: Akira Kurosawa)

 For a Few Dollars More (1965; director/co-screenwriter: Sergio Leone)

The Last Round (1976, director: Stelvio Massi)

When the Raven Flies (1984, a.k.a. Revenge of the Barbarians)

 Miller’s Crossing (1990; directors: Joel and an uncredited Ethan Coen)

Last Man Standing (1996; director: Walter Hill; stars: Bruce Willis and Christopher Walken)

Firefox by Craig Thomas

(pb; 1977: first book in the Mitchell Gant quadrilogy)

From the back cover

“Firefox. Code name for the deadliest warplane ever built., the Soviet Mig-31. Its lethal weapons system is controlled by pilot thought-impulses. So invincible it could wipe America out of the skies.”

Review

The first Firefox novel is a gripping, tightly written action thriller that got this reader from its first word to its last. One of the admirable things about it is how Thomas keeps the technical information balanced, interesting enough─I would guess─to maintain the interest of tech-heads, but brief and mainstream enough that an average reader like myself would get [and enjoy] the gist of it. This is a fun, Cold War-era blast of sweaty-PTSD prose, a good kick-back-for-a-couple-of-hours book.

Followed by Firefox Down!

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The resulting film was released on June 16, 1982. Clint Eastwood directed and starred in the film (he played the main character, Mitchell Gant). The screenplay was written by Alex Lasker and Wendell Wellman.

Freddie Jones played Kenneth Aubrey. Nigel Hawthorne played Pyotor Baranovich.

Kenneth Colley played Colonel Kontarsky. Klaus Löwitsch, billed as Klaus Lowitsch, played General Vladimirov. David Huffman played Captain Buckholz. Warren Clarke played Pavel Upenskoy. 

Sudden Impact by Joseph C. Stinson

(pb; 1983: movie tie-in)

From the back cover

“Rape─and revenge!

“There he was! She had never been able to forget his face. His face─and the leering, jeering gang who  had been with him enjoying her pain and humiliation as each one took his turn. Well, he wouldn’t get away. He deserved to die.

“This murder will only be a beginning. And Dirty Harry finds himself smack in the middle of revenge on a grand scale as he tracks the woman who is tracking the rape gang.”

Review

This is a fun─as in darkly amusing, brutal and violent─lazy afternoon book (based on Stinson’s screenplay). Stinson streamlines this short, blunt, ugly, action-dominated and not-for-the-sensitive movie tie-in into a read that one should not take seriously, lest one slip into pompousness or equally unattractive attitudes. This is not high art this is well-written pay-the-bills work.

Readers who are especially sensitive about the subject of rape (Sudden suggests that a bullet will go a long way toward alleviating post-violation suffering), occasional blue collar racism (Harry affectionately thinks of a close friend, Horace, as a “darky son-of-a-bitch”) and general Dirty Harry-isms will probably not like Sudden. If you fit that description, and read it anyway and are offended, that’s on you, no one else.

I do not know if this is a collector’s item or not, but if you find a good condition copy of Sudden for a relatively cheap price─like I did─it might be worth picking up.

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The film version─the fourth of five Dirty Harry flicks─was released stateside on December 9, 1983. Joseph C. Stinson, sometimes billed as Joseph Stinson, wrote the screenplay, based on Earl E. Smith and Charles B. Pierce’s story. An uncredited Dean Riesner also contributed to the story. Stinson also wrote Clint Eastwood's City Heat (1984) and was an uncredited writer on Eastwood's Heartbreak Ridge (1986).

Eastwood, who directed the film, played “Dirty Harry” Callahan. Sondra Locke played Jennifer Spencer. Albert Popwell, who appeared in two other Dirty Harry films as different characters (Magnum Force, 1973, and The Enforcer, 1976), played Horace King. Mark Keyloun played Officer Bennett.

Audrie Neenan, billed as Audrie J. Neenan, played Ray Parkins. Jack Thibeau played Kruger. Nancy Parsons played Mrs. Kruger. Paul Drake played Mick.

Pat Hingle, another Eastwood-flick semi-regular, played Chief Jannings. He, playing different characters, appeared in an episode of the Clint Eastwood show Rawhide (Season 7 episode 14: "The Book"; original air date: January 8, 1965). He also appeared in Hang 'Em High (1968).

Mara Corday played “Loretta—Coffee Shop Waitress.” She also appeared in four other Eastwood flicks as different characters (Tarantula, 1955, in which Eastwood played an uncredited "Jet Squadron Leader"; The Gauntlet, 1977; Pink Cadillac, 1989; and The Rookie, 1990).