Showing posts with label Herbert Kastle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Herbert Kastle. Show all posts

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.

Thursday, August 24, 2017

Manhunt, February 1956 (Volume 4, Number 2)


This February 1956 issue of Manhunt is a special thing indeed, as it features the first of two stories Herbert Kastle would contribute to the magazine. I’ve wanted to read either of these stories for a long time, but it took me a while to track down one of the mags Kastle appeared in. His story is “They’re Chasing Us!,” and while it’s entertaining, it is hard to compare to Kastle’s later lurid masterpieces like Ladies Of The Valley.

Kastle was new in the writing field in ’56, still credited as “Herbert D. Kastle,” thus his name isn’t even headlined on the cover. And his story is buried toward the back, though of course I read it first. It’s only a few pages long (double-columned pages like all the other stories are, though), and it concerns a pair of brothers named Sid and Mel. In their 40s, the two share an apartment with Norma, Mel’s woman, though Sid lusts for her – a harbinger of future Kastle material is that this story features a guy who lusts after a woman who belongs to someone else and who successfully pressures her into having sex with him.

Sid and Mel are crooks, making their living knocking over stores. They want to get out of the hellhole of Brooklyn, though Norma complains that their neighbors, who have go-nowhere jobs, are actually doing better. This is proven at the start of the tale, with Sid returning to the apartment after the latest robbery and discovering they didn’t come off with as much cash as expected. Meanwhile, he bullies Norma into sex, which Kastle of course keeps off-page. When Mel comes back he instantly figures out the two have been screwing, but he’s cool with it. Another Kastle mainstay – the screwed-up “family” in which the single woman is shared, a la Cross-Country.

Then someone knocks on the door, claiming to be from the phone company, and the brothers instantly figure it’s the cops. They escape, there are gunshots, they shoot at some cops while they run. They abandon Norma back in the apartment. Mel’s shot in the ass and Sid manages to pull him into a car, taking hostage some random woman on the street as they go – they pistol-whip her and dump her. An underworld doc fixes Mel up in the back seat while Sid drives around, and the tale ends with Sid realizing their cash is low and their chances even lower, but he’s going to try to get them to safety.

This is a fast-moving tale and Kastle has the hardboiled vibe down pat; the brothers carry .38 revolvers and say all the right tough-guy dialog. But as mentioned it doesn’t feel like Kastle at all; if you were to tell me this was by say Fletcher Flora or Richard Deming or some other random contributor of the magazine I wouldn’t know otherwise. The same cannot be said of the only other early Kastle short story I’ve read, “Game,” which Ed Gorman collected in his anthology American Pulp; that one is pure Herbert Kastle, about a guy who thinks he’s saving some woman from a twisted relationship. I enjoyed that one so much I’ve been meaning to re-read it.

There are a bunch of stories in this issue of Manhunt. I didn’t read all of them. Here are my thoughts on the ones I did read:

“Block Party” by Sam Merwin, Jr – this 12-page “novelette” opens the magazine and concerns another pair of crooks: Tony and Carl, who when we meet them are slipping on “plastic rubber masks” and pulling a hotel heist – one of them’s in a Hopalong Cassidy mask and the other in a Joan Crawford mask, the latter to fool witnesses into thinking they’re “a pair of queers.” They’ve been hired by Dixon to steal the contents of a safe which contains blackmail photos, and they’re free to take their own haul.

But the way these things go, someone dies – Carl accidentally hog-ties the night manager too tightly and he strangles to death. This doesn’t sit well with Dixon, who tells the guys they need to escape to Mexico. He’ll even drive them to the bus stop. But when the car “breaks down” on the drive, Tony figures it’s a rubout; he drives over Dixon and he and Carl get on a bus; the tale ends with Tony figuring he’ll have to kill Carl as well. This one was okay, competently written, but didn’t offer much new.

Up next is an actual novelette, “Sauce For The Gander,” by Richard Deming; this one features a recurring character named Clancy Ross. A gambler who owns the Club Rotunda, Clancy is given zero introduction; about the most we learn is he has a scar on his face. His sidekick is a dude named Sam Black. This overlong-but-simple tale concerns the new Club Rotunda bookkeeper who is murdered by someone, and Ross helps the cops figure it out who did it. Along the way he has run-ins with various Syndicate hitmen and the bookkeeper’s hot widow, who throws herself on Ross for some off-page sex. This sequence leads to the unforgettable line, “I’m not a nympho, Clancy.” Probably the only time these words have ever been spoken. This one’s just overdone, a simple story blown to extreme portions.

Much better is “Fog,” by Gil Brewer, a story recently collected in the Brewer anthology Redheads Die Quickly. It’s the usual Brewer tale about simmering lust that explodes into full-bore sex. It’s about a guy visiting Florida and looking up his old friend; instead he finds the man’s sexy wife home alone, wearing a see-through robe, complaining about the heat, and coming on to him strong. He beats a retreat and goes back to his hotel, only to be called by her late that night. She claims her husband disappeared in the fog that has settled upon town, and the two walk around in it looking for him. It’s a surreal tale which of course leads up to them having hot off-page sex. The cover of the issue blows the surprise end, though – turns out there’s a good reason why we haven’t seen the nympho’s husband yet.

Robert Bloch gives us “Terror In The Night,” a first-person short-short about a woman who has escaped a mental asylum and swears to the narrator that murder and rape occurs behind the barred windows of the place, but our narrator and his wife think she’s making up the story due to her insanity, particularly the part about the bloodhounds sent after her. She runs away. Ends as expected with the narrator and his wife being woken that night by the howls of bloodhounds.

Fletcher Flora turns in “Handy Man,” an entertaining tale about Carey Regan, “handy man” (aka hit man) for Campan, a newly-powerful crime boss who sees Regan as his servant. They started off together, but now Campan’s the big man, so big that he no longer even needs his first name; he’s just “Campan.” Meanwhile Regan’s screwing Campan’s hot wife; he bridles when she bemoans that Regan will “never be more than a handy man.” Campan tasks Regan with killing the Swede, another crime boss. There’s a cool part where Regan sits alone in his apartment, not drinking or smoking or anything else, and lets the “coldness” take him over – then he drives over to the Swede’s place and guns down his prey and his henchman. Story ends just the way you expected it would, with Regan next killing off Campan himself and taking over his operation – “Just call me Regan,” he tells Campan’s widow.

“Killer” is a short first-person tale by William Logan; this one’s similar to “Handy Man” in that it’s about a professional killer. The narrator is tasked by his boss, Mr. Rose, to figure out the leak in the organization; Rose is certain it’s either our narrator or Charlie. Our narrator has a wife named Sue, who turns out to be screwing Charlie, who turns out to be the leak – instead of killing them himself, the narrator calls in Mr. Rose’s goons.

“Job With A Future” is by Richard Welles and is told in first-person present tense; it’s narrated by a 17 year-old who can’t find a job, and eventually gets paid driving the getaway car at robberies. But he’s shot during one, and the tale ends with him dying as he tries to escape.

“Shot” by Roy Carroll wraps up the issue; according to the Philsp site, Carroll was a pseudonym used by a few writers, one of them being Robert Turner. I’m betting this is his work, as the short tale is similar to those Turner collected in Shroud 9. So similar you wonder why this one wasn’t included. It concerns Renick, a regular dude who is shot while walking the crowded city streets, waiting for his wife. He stumbles around in a panic, not knowing who shot him or why; a guy comes up to help him, somehow knowing Rencik’s name. Turns out this is the man who shot him, a professional killer who complains that he actually missed with his silenced .45. Renick escapes him, but the hitman hurls a knife into his back; Renick dies on the city streets, just as a cop shows up. Turns out Renick’s wife was the one who hired the hitman. Cold!

Thursday, September 3, 2015

Hot Prowl


Hot Prowl, by Herbert D. Kastle
No month stated, 1965  Fawcett Gold Medal

This was the last novel Herbert Kastle wrote for Gold Medal Books and he certainly went out with a bang. It was also the last novel he published with the “D.” in his name; after this he’d just be “Herbert Kastle” and he’d begin writing Harold Robbins-esque blockbusters, starting with the 1968 bestseller The Moviemaker. And in a way Hot Prowl, while nominally supsense fiction as expected from Gold Medal, points the way to Kastle’s later, more unhinged work.

I couldn’t find any info online regarding what this novel was about, and the back cover wasn’t much help either, just a snatch of dialog from the book itself. Same goes for the first-page preview. But Hot Prowl turns out to be Kastle’s take on Death Wish, or Bronson or The Vigilante to use more obscure comparisons; it’s about a 36 year-old New York PR guy named Ted Barth whose life was destroyed ten months ago when his wife and nine-year-old daughter were murdered by a young punk who broke into their Manhattan apartment in the middle of the night – a “hot prowl,” as such cases are known, where the perp breaks into a residence knowing there are people inside.

Now Barth roams the mean streets of New York in the middle of the night, seeking “the boy,” whom the cops have been unable to find. We’ll eventually learn that Barth was sleeping on the couch the night of the break-in, as his relationship with his wife Myrna was in no way idyllic, and he caught a fleeting glimpse of the kid as he ran from the apartment, jumping out the window and running down the fire escape. The kid’s face is burned in Barth’s brain and now he’s hungry for vengeance, the many months since the murders doing nothing to dull his anger. But unlike the men’s adventure novels that would follow within the next several years, Barth goes out without any weaponry, save for his own hands. Like a regular Jason Striker our hero is a judo expert and relishes the thought of killing the boy with his bare hands.

However, this is a Herbert Kastle novel, and Ted Barth is in no way, shape or form a white hat hero. As is typical with a Kastle protagonist, the guy is royally fucked up. And this isn’t just fallout from the loss of his family, as we learn he’s always had a few screws loose. Within the first few pages he’s already lusting for some woman, staying with his brother-in-law Wallace at a cabin retreat in upstate New York for a week’s vacation. Barth watches from the shrubs as the young girl, a worker at the retreat, spurns the advances of another young man, and then he pounces on her, hoping to talk her into going back up to his cabin. But when another coworker tries to stake his claim on the girl, Barth beats the shit out of him with his judo, enjoying it; the girl runs away from him.

One thing typical about Kastle’s “heroes” is how they fight with everyone. In every Kastle novel I’ve read the protagonist is a dude in his 30s or 40s who has been beaten down by life, realizes he’s missed out on everything, and is goddamn determined to catch up on lost time, no matter who he has to step on. This generally takes him into darker realms of the psyche, and as is common with the typical Kastle protagonist, Barth is more than willing to make the journey. In the 160 breezy pages of Hot Prowl Ted Barth beats up multiple people, runs afoul of the cops, gets kicked out of his judo class for being too savage, assaults and maims former coworkers, sleeps with multiple hookers (including one who is thirteen years old), stalks a woman, and roams the streets starting fights. And then he stars doing really bad stuff.

So in other words there isn’t much heroic about the guy, which again differentiates him from the men’s adventure protagonists who would arrive on the scene within the decade. Barth has been horribly wronged but you realize he’s more about his own satisfaction than about righting any wrong; it gradually develops that “the boy” has just become Barth’s outlet for the wrong directions he took in his life, and Barth’s thinking is that if he can find him and kill him Barth can start a new life in a new city. He’s long ago stopped relying on the cops, much to the dismay of Lt. D’Andrea, who heads up the investigation into the murder of Barth’s family. D’Andrea is getting sick of Barth, particularly how he’s been hauled in by the cops so many times for wandering around the tougher parts of the city late at night and causing trouble.

Meanwhile Barth is also fixated on Susan, a pretty young blonde who works in his PR firm (Barth is on an extended leave of absence, by the way). He goes on friendly dates with her and is determined to take it to the next level, but Susan enjoys playing the field and appears to be getting serious with a guy her age named Arthur. But Barth keeps pushing her, asking her on dates and not getting the hint when she frostily tells him she has plans with Arthur. Soon he’s stalking her, even planning to beat Arthur nearly to death so that Susan will have no choice but to fall in love with him. A madman’s plan, but Barth is a madman, the most psychotic protagonist in a Kastle novel yet.

In between the Susan-stalking and street-prowling Barth gets involved in a lot of memorable moments. He takes on various thugs with nothing more than his fists and feet, and to slake his lust at one point he hires a pair of hookers, one black and one white. Kastle doesn’t go into as much detail in the sex scenes, none of which are as explicit as the ones he’d be writing in just a few years, but they certainly aren’t vague. As usual though it’s the dark comedy that’s more potent, like how the black hooker tries to make away with Barth’s cash box without him noticing it, and he gets in a brawl with her, knocking her flat with his judo skills and apparently having sex with her afterwards – another hallmark of a Kastle protagonist is that violence turns him on.

More hooker sex follows later in the book in a more descriptive passage, all the more shocking because the whore is only thirteen. This is in a desolate patch of Manhattan mostly occupied by blacks in tenement buildings; the hooker is bait and tries to lure Barth into an abandoned building. He follows her, knowing someone will be waiting in the shadows to jump him and take his money. He happily beats the dude nearly to death with his judo and then calls the “infant” over to look. She again offers herself to him, and Barth does the prepubescent right there on the wall. Meanwhile it’s back to the search for that guy who killed his wife and daughter; Barth haunts the many pawn shops in the New York area, the clues he seeks being the tape recorder, film camera, and wedding ring the thief stole that night.

The lead which brings the hot prowler out into the open is when the cops turn up the stolen tape recorder in a Long Island pawn shop. The old man there is a fence who does business with the kid. When Barth goes down to the precinct to identify the tape, there follows a heartbreaking moment where he plays the tape that’s still in it and hears the voice of his daughter. Kastle proves again his mastery by understating this scene. Whereas today it’s all about overstatement, with a scene like this requiring a teeth-gnashing hero bawling his eyes out, Kastle understands that understatement is more powerful. Barth merely plays the tape, listens, and then shuts it off because he can’t take anymore. 

Things come to a head when the punk kid begins stalking Barth. He comes home one night to find a threatening note slid beneath his door, and soon after begins receiving calls from the kid. Barth doesn’t tell D’Andrea and begins leaving his door unlocked at night, basically inviting the kid inside. He also soon realizes the kid is following behind him on the streets, and this leads to several chases. Finally he gets the kid, who tries to jump him one night. Barth is only able to use a savage arm lock on the kid before D’Andrea and the cops show up – they’ve been shadowing Barth too, knowing he was setting himself up as bait for the kid, who turns out to be a punk named Arhtur Brest.

Here is where Kastle begins to toy with the narrative and with our thoughts of it so far. The kid is interrogated and insists that he didn’t kill the wife or the daughter, that they were both alive when he ran out of the apartment. This is why he was stalking Barth now, because he was afraid Barth was going to make him take the fall for those murders. D’Andrea tells the kid he’s nuts, that no one would suspect that Barth himself killed his family. But here’s the thing – the reader sure as hell suspects it, because we’ve seen what a nutcase Ted Barth truly is. At this point nothing’s sacred in the novel, as we begin to wonder if Barth really did kill Myra and little Debbie. But the cops aren’t privy to how crazy the dude is, and D’Andrea is certain Brest will crack soon enough and admit it all – the kid is a heroin addict and is in the early stages of withdrawal.

Things spiral from here, along with Barth’s sanity. He’s desperate to get Brest to admit to the slayings, but the kid won’t budge. Mostly Barth just wants some time alone with the kid, and convinces D’Andrea to let him near the kid in his cell. Barth of course plans to kill Brest, reaching through the bars, but D’Andrea is as always two steps ahead of him and has Barth thrown out. Now openly sick of Barth, the cop tells him it’s time to get on with his life – the perp has been caught, the murderer of Barth’s family will pay. So, given that the villain of the piece has been captured, you’d think our protagonist would be happy, but again this is a Herbert Kastle protagonist we’re talking about, so what does he do? He gets serious about beating Susan’s boyfriend to death and then fucking Susan silly.

I’d advise skipping to the last two paragraphs of this review if you’d like to avoid spoilers. Get prepared for an uncomfortable read in the final chapters; Barth talks Susan into a trip to the beach, during which he hassles her, making his interest clearly known. She turns him down again and again; she’s never felt that way about him, she declares. Barth sulks but then realizes that “the Susan of the flesh” can still be his, even if the Susan of his dreams can’t be; he’s become fixated on her as the solution to all his ills, that they could run away and live together in a new city. She invites him in to her place back in the city and Barth excuses himself, then breaks into the bathroom as she’s taking a shower and gets in it with her. He beats her around a little with his judo, tells her to yield to him, and then rapes her on the bathroom floor.

It only gets darker. Barth threatens Arthur’s life – if Susan tells the police he raped her, he will kill the young man. Susan, beaten and terrified, swears she won’t say anyting. Barth leaves, satisfied with his victory over both the woman and his feelings for her – it was only lust after all, not love – only to find D’Andrea and another cop lurking in the apartment complex foyer. Turns out D’Andrea had heard Barth was stalking someone in this area (Susan’s boyfriend Arthur, of course), and had come by to check on him, given how unhinged he’s become. This leads to a desperate fight in which Barth unleashes his full judo skills on the two cops, during which we get to see what really happened that night of the “hot prowl.”

As the reader has already begun to suspect, it was Ted Barth himself who killed his wife and daughter – his wife because he was sick of her, sick of his stultifying married life with her, and used the break-in that night as a cover to murder her. But his daughter Debbie saw him do it, and he “had no choice” but to kill her, too. Having sliced both their throats with a steak knife, Barth broke the blade in pieces and flushed it, and “that Ted Barth never left the bathroom.” He had a psychic break, and in his mind he only came to when Bresk ran from the apartment; only until this moment he had forgotten about the fact that he himself was the murderer of his family. All this is relayed as Barth lies dying from a gutshot courtesy the cop with D’Andrea; without being aware of it he tells D’Andrea what really happened that night, and then dies, “leaping” into the abyss.

In a way this really is a cheat; you’re presented with this character whose life has been destroyed and you want to take him at face value. But Kastle’s interests as ever lie elsewhere. His theme isn’t how terrible events can destory a man, but that the man was terrible in the first place and the events just made him worse – events which he caused himself. I know the Fugitive TV show pulled this same trick, with the hero turning out at long last to have really been the murderer all along, but Kastle’s novel predates that. However Kastle’s reveal likely wasn’t as suprising to readers, as nowhere in Hot Prowl is Ted Barth cast in a heroic light. He’s ready to blow from page one. And boy does he.

Now as for Kastle’s writing – as usual, it’s superb. I realized as I read Hot Prowl that Kastle is one of those rare writers who turns out great prose, with just the right dialog, phrasing, and composition, yet he also has that ability where you become immersed in the narrative to the point where you don’t even realize the quality of his writing. In other words he pulls you into the fictive dream, which is the goal of every author but is achieved only by the best. It’s just yet another reason why Kastle should be remembered today, but he’s been forgotten.

The guy is definitely one of my favorite authors and one of these days I intend to track down the short stories he wrote for various crime magazines at the time, in particular the two issues of Manhunt which feature his work.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Cross-Country


Cross-Country, by Herbert Kastle
December, 1975  Dell Books

This was Herbert Kastle's last hardcover book for a few years, at least here in the States; after this novel he was relegated to paperback originals (until Ladies of the Valley, which came out in hardcover in 1979). Which is fine by me, as I much prefer paperbacks. But anyway at least Cross-Country was a memorable way to go out, Kastle returning to his crime fiction roots but leavening the tale with the hot and heavy sex scenes he’d been writing since 1968 in his steamy, Harold Robbins-style potboilers.

The novel opens with the discovery of Judith Keel’s mutilated corpse – Keel, a gorgeous blonde who worked as an assistant in an ad agency, has been hacked up in horrible fashion in her Manhattan apartment, her severed arms chained to the headboard of her bed and her body tossed on the floor and further desecrated. From this we jump to Evan Bley, a top ad man at the agency Keel worked for, and Kastle immediately lets us know that this guy likely killed Judith; Evan’s stopping off in a topless bar for a quick drink before getting in his Jaguar and leaving New York forever.

But Evan’s picked up by a stacked brunette with an Australian accent; the lady is named Lois, and she instantly deduces that Evan’s planning to ditch town and she wants to go with him, especially when Evan informs her he’s planning a cross-country drive to Los Angeles. After getting bombed out on the bar’s potent drinks, Evan wakes to find himself sprawled out on the backseat of his own car, Lois in the passenger seat…and some bearded freak behind the wheel. This turns out to be John, Lois’s ex-boyfriend, and thus begins the major twisted thread of this twisted novel.

In one of the most brazen acts of coincidence I’ve ever read in a novel, Kastle gradually reveals that, unbeknownst to one another, each of these strangers knew Judith Keel. Thus, since each of them have shady, lawless backgrounds and insane tendencies, each of them are actually suspects as Keel’s murderer. Before we get to that though we have a long, tense sequence in which they keep going up against one another, Evan feeling like he’s been swindled, what with the sudden appearance of John, who comes off like a creep who’s planning to steal Evan’s car and/or slash his throat while Evan’s sleeping. Kastle is a dark comedy master and this sequence is filled with it, as Evan and John keep trying to one up one another.

Meanwhile we are introduced to the hero of the tale, such as he is: Detective Eddie Roersch of the NYPD, a 30+ year veteran of the force who, at a heavyset and weathered 55, feels like life has passed him by and that he’ll never get the recognition or the pay he deserves. Despite having more collars than any other detective in his precinct, Roersch has never been promoted to Lieutenant, let alone Captain.

Beyond the job Roersch’s personal life is in disarray, given the death seven months ago of his wife of three decades. Not that Kastle makes much of Roersch’s widowhood; he’s already sort of moved on, scoring sex from a high-class hooker named Ruthie who happens to live on the same floor as Roersch’s Manhattan apartment. In exchange for not busting her Ruthie gives Roersch freebies, but over these past few months Roersch has found himself thinking of Ruthie as more than just a free lay.

Assigned the Keel case, Roersch very quickly deduces that Evan Bley is the top suspect. The majority of the Roersch sections follow a police procedural format, with Roersch tracking clues and leads. Soon enough he has what he figures is a cut and dry case against Bley. But this is a Kastle novel, and there are no white hats; seeing as how wealthy Bley is, Roersch decides that instead of tracking him down and arresting him, Roersch will instead build a solid case against Bley, find him, and tell him he can either go to the chair or pay Roersch a few hundred thousand dollars, and Bley will go free.

Evan Bley, though, is pretty sick. Not really sick, but tormented, having grown up with an overbearing mother who burned a permanent scar into young Evan, having once discovered him masturbating in the bathroom. In one of those bizarre yet (darkly) humorous scenes he excels in, Kastle has the mom go apeshit, beating young Evan and then, believe it or not, pulling down her skirt and graphically showing him that it’s her time of the month and blaming it all on him! Well, you won’t be surprised to know that this has had some definite ramifications on Evan, who nonetheless considers himself a “monster.” Kastle himself builds a pretty damning case against Bley as being Judith Keel’s murderer, but Bley’s fellow passengers are screwed up too.

John has his own sob story background: he’s from a wealthy background but has been drifting around the country for the past decade. In another dark comedy flashback we see how when John was a young boy his dad went balistic when he found out that John’s mom was sleeping around, a crazed scene that sees a poor dog kicked around until it’s hamburger. Lois too is fucked up, being raped by her father when a teenager and from there finding brief comfort in the arms of other women; but lesbian affairs are completely against her nature, she constantly chastizes herself. Having been in the States for the past few years she makes her meager living dancing in bars or working in massage parlors, but she dreams of becoming a famous actress. When she finds out that Evan has contacts in the industry, she latches on to him.

What’s weird is how Kastle builds a familial relationship for these three whackjobs. First though there’s the tension, both of the danger and the sexual variety; Lois coming on to Evan, much to John’s frustration. And you can’t help but feel sorry for the guy, given how Lois so brazenly rubs it in his face that she’s over him and now wants Evan – who is not only better looking and in better shape, but has more money and a bigger dick. In fact Evan’s size is often brought up, particularly in the first of several highly graphic sex scenes between him and Lois – as I wrote above, Kastle with this novel returned to the crime fiction genre he’d written in the early ‘60s, but here he’s free to give vent to his most explicit ideas. There’s some hardcore stuff throughout Cross-Country, and no detail is spared.

As the trio moves on through the Midwest they become closer, Lois feeling like the glue that holds them all together (sometimes literally). But she’s moved on from John and wants Evan for herself, so in another lurid sequence they manage to pick up an attractive but stupid redneck girl named Alma-Jean, who works in a clothing store. More drinking, drugs, and group sex ensues, but Lois, who has lesbian tendencies she tries to subdue, loses control of herself on the girl.

Another demonstration of Kastle’s skill, this sequence goes from erotica to horror as it devolves into bad vibes all around, Lois storming off and Alma-Jean hitting the road, sick of these “freaks,” with John trying to find her before she can get away. Kastle plays this game throughout where we know that one of the trio is a murderer, but which one? They all have their issues, and they all have their chances in the narrative to commit murder – and sure enough, later on we learn that Alma-Jean’s mutilated body has been discovered in a dumpster outside the hotel, and it could’ve been any one of the three who killed her.

Roersch, still in New York, begins to doubt his blackmail scheme, once news of Alma-Jean’s death comes to him. This means that, along with Judith Keel and two other murdered girls, four people have been killed by Bley (Roersch’s only suspect; he doesn’t even know about Lois or John), and how could Roersch live with himself if he allowed a monster like that to escape justice? Meanwhile Roersch goes on with his life, finding that his feelings for Ruthie, the hooker next door, have increased to the point where he wants the blackmail money from Bey so as to provide a better life for her and her prepubescent daughter.

Cross-Country is more of a slow burn affair, and lacks the dynamic characterization and plotting of Ladies of the Valley. It is however a much darker tale (believe it or not), with practically every character fucked up to some degree. But the writing is as strong as ever, with Kastle fully bringing his rejects to life; he remains locked in each perspective when featuring each character, and brings you enough into their worlds that you can at least understand them, if not like them. Save for Lois, who comes off as more self-centered and annoying in her sequences, and I get the feeling Kastle had a hard time writing about her, as there isn’t much there.

The action only picks up toward the climax, when Roersch feels he’s successfully put together his case (after visits with Roersch’s still-domineering mother, now old and alone, as well as a private eye named McKenney, who tailed Judith Keel for Bley) and heads for a confrontation with the man in the Grand Canyon, having got hold of Bley’s planned travel route through AA (Bley being a member). But we see that it’s all come to a head for our depraved trio, as well, as during another group sex session things again become nightmarish, with bad vibes leading to a startling but expected bit where John buggers Evan – who despite his shock realizes he enjoys it.

Please skip this paragraph if you don’t want the novel’s surprise spoiled. As mentioned above, Evan, John, and Lois could each have been the murderer of Judith Keel, as well as poor Alma-Jean and some other women back in New York. Gradually though I figured out which of the three it was, mostly due to a bit of foreshadowing Kastle delivers early in the book; Roersch, considering the horrible nature of the Keel murder, figures it had to have been a man behind it, as female murders of such brutality are few. He can only think of the Countess Bathory. From this I soon figured Kastle was foreshadowing that Lois was actually Keel’s murderer (and all the other girls besides). And Lois does indeed turn out to be the killer, as revealed at the very end. As yet another example of his writing skill, you can go back to the sequences from Lois’s POV and see how Kastle has so masterfully left clues therein. But my problem here is that after this reveal Lois immediately “acts crazy,” blithely recounting her murderous deeds to Roersch as she perches above a chasm in the Grand Canyon. The way her character acts here in the climax is so separate from how she acted throughout the rest of the novel that it comes off like a cheap cop-out; however Kastle does cover himself by having Lois already feeling a sort of psychotic break thanks to discovering Evan’s homosexual tendencies the night before. Now learning that Bley’s a “goddamn closet queen,” her hopes for Hollywood stardom are dashed, and she’s gone around the bend. But still, it comes off as too much, too late.

This was the first of a loose trilogy featuring Roersch; he appeared in Kastle’s next two novels, both of them as mentioned paperback originals: The Gang (1976) and Death Squad (1977). Finally, there was a film adaptation of Cross-Country, released in 1983; there’s no DVD, but it came out on VHS (glad I still have a VCR player!). One of these days I might check it out, just to see how far it strays from Kastle’s novel – one thing I do know is they changed it so that Judith Keel was Bley’s wife, which I guess they thought would add more tension and suspense.

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Edward Berner Is Alive Again!


Edward Berner Is Alive Again!, by Herbert Kastle
No month stated, 1975  Prentice-Hall

In 1964 Herbert Kastle published the paperback-only novel The Reassembled Man. In 1975 he published this hardcover-only revision. It’s almost a complete rewrite, and I’m not sure why Kastle didn’t just publish it as its own novel. But then, only the first hundred pages are new – after which the novel is basically just a complete reprint of The Reassembled Man. At any rate Edward Berner Is Alive Again! is maybe the most obscure of Kastle’s books, garnering only this hardcover edition in the US. (In the UK it was published both in hardcover and paperback under the title The Three Lives Of Edward Berner.)

The previous incarnation of this story started at the beginning, with Ed Berner leaving his house for a drive and then finding himself, days later, standing before some human-sized beetles from outer space. Space beetles calling themselves The Druggish who offered to make all of Ed’s dreams come true. Edward Berner Is Alive Again! dispenses with this and throws you right in, so that, like it’s protagonist, you’re not really sure what’s going on for a hundred pages or so.

This time though Ed has been given the chance to relive his childhood – the novel opens with Ed finding himself in his 15 year-old body, sitting in a class room in Brooklyn in 1938. He retains his memories, memories which span decades, of his wife and his kids and all that’s happened in his life, but he can’t understand how he knows such things, or how he came to be here. Every time he tries to ponder the issue, a sort of “calming hand” brushes his mind and the troublesome thoughts go away.

Realizing he’s been given a second chance, Ed (referred to as “Eddie” throughout these opening 100+ pages) vows to make life better for his family. He lives in a crumbling apartment building with his parents; his dad barely makes a living collecting payments for his office, and his mother is a housewife. Neither of them know how to cope with Ed’s sudden personality change; whereas just a few days previously (for them) Ed was your typical sullen teenaged punk, he’s now an overly-caring individual who asks them how they’re doing, kisses his mother on the cheek, and tells them he plans to work through the summer.

Kastle is a master at narrative and character, and he shines throughout this opening half of the novel, bringing to life the 1930s New York City which Kastle himself grew up in. His only failing is, again, Ed Berner himself. I said in my review of The Reassembled Man that the novel would’ve been stronger if Kastle had shown us more of Ed’s life before he became a Druggish-powered Superman, but even here, where the first hundred pages focus on Ed before he gains his superpowers, he still comes off as being obsessed solely with money and sex.

Never once does Ed sit back and relax and rejoice in the fact that he now has an opportunity to be a kid again, to not have to worry about going to work or paying the bills or taking care of the kids. Instead he bolts into action, realizing that with his decades-spanning knowledge he could become a titan in the business world of the 1930s. The only problem is, he has no money to start off his big dreams.

Here the novel sort of resembles Ken Grimwood’s later (and superior) novel Replay, with Ed winning money on bets – betting on sports outcomes with his future knowledge. Soon Ed has gotten thousands of dollars this way, a veritable fortune in late ‘30s New York, but it rings false because Ed bets on all kinds of sports stuff…horse races, track and field stuff, boxing matches, etc, winning against impossible odds each time because he knows who’s going to win. But it’s just goofy to believe the guy could retain that much trivial information over so many decades…ie, that the 1975 Edward Berner could remember who won the long-jump in a Brooklyn match in 1938.

Another thing consistent about Ed’s characterization in the two novels is that he’s too stubborn and doesn’t pause to consider his rashness. It’s obvious he’s heading for misery with his rampant betting, pissing off the local toughs, but Ed pushes on heedless, using an 18 year-old college student to do the betting for him. Ed couldn’t care less, though, because he’s also busy chasing his other main interest – sex.

In this ’38 sequence Ed does not have the “equipment” and hypnotic powers he’s graced with later in the book and in The Reassembled Man, but he still does nicely for himself, managing to talk the attractive lady next door into sleeping with him. Quite a feat for a 15 year-old…and, due to his future knowledge of how to please a lady (something Kastle states the average ‘30s guy was oblivious of), the lady can’t get enough.

Ed also chases after his lifelong love, a girl his age named Sheila who is currently dating an older boy. Throughout this section Kastle does a great job of having Ed do all those things he wishes he’d done…like using his future-learned judo skills to beat up the school bully and anyone else who gets in his way. In this fashion he’s able to win the heart of Sheila, taking her out and spending exorbitant amounts on her.

Kastle as you know is a dark comedy master, and always has something up his sleeve…like when Ed finally achieves his lifelong dream and gets intimate with Sheila; he suddenly feels like “an old man” feeling up a teenaged girl, and basically goes nuts on her. Kastle’s also smart enough to make clear that you can’t go home again, with Ed discovering to his horror that the reality is nothing like the fantasy.

Another of Kastle’s strengths is weaving a bunch of webs and then pulling them together for a dark and unexpected ending, and he does so here, having Ed’s life spiral out of control, all the bad things he tried to prevent happening regardless, and indeed happening earlier than they did in his previous life. And just as it looks to be the end for Ed himself, he blacks out and comes to in a metal room surrounded by human-sized beetles from outer space.

Yes, it turns out that this entire opening section was nothing more than a dream, one made possible by Druggish technology. Ed, once again in his 52 year-old body, is irate – he remembers everything now, and he’d thought he would really live his life over, not just dream it, so he accuses the Druggish of screwing him over. But the Druggish make it clear that there’s no way they could reverse time for the entire planet, and in fact they argue that they upheld their end of the deal. Turns out though that this was just a trial run of sorts, and they still want Ed’s assistance: they want him to become a recorder of human life, and in exchange they will grant Ed’s wishes.

From here on the novel basically reprints The Reassembled Man, with only the most minor of changes and deletions. The dichotomy is pretty obvious because Ed never once reflects back on the 1938 section and indeed all of it comes off as superfluous to the rest of the book. But then, the Druggish have erased Ed’s memory of them, so there’s no way he could remember that trip back to his childhood. So, though it makes sense narrative-wise, it still comes off as troubling that we’ve read over a hundred pages that have ultimately no bearing on the rest of the book – which itself is just a reprint of an earlier novel.

Kastle does add one new page to this reprinted section, at the very end. Instead of ending on the “happily ever after” note of The Reassembled Man, he expands it to show that Ed, even though all of his dreams have been realized, will still always be plagued by doubt and “what could have been” fantasies; surely a little bit of commentary from our author.

So then, Edward Berner Is Alive Again! might be the superior of the two novels, if just for the opening sequence in 1938, which really is enjoyable, and doesn’t fall into the “new woman to sleep with” predictability of The Reassembled Man. And throughout Kastle’s writing is superb, bringing to life even the most minor characters, gripping the emotions and making the reader think. The guy was a hell of an author, and it’s a shame he’s so unknown today.

Monday, February 18, 2013

The Reassembled Man


The Reassembled Man, by Herbert D. Kastle
No month stated, 1964  Fawcett Crest Books

Before he hit mainstream success in 1969 with his “sell-out novel” The MoviemakerHerbert Kastle published a variety of novels, from literature to genre fiction. As far as I know, The Reassembled Man was his only science fiction novel – but then, it’s only sci-fi in its trappings. In its execution the novel is basically soft porn (and “soft” due to the year in which it was published, I’m sure), not much different than the average Harold Robbins novel.

In fact, you could consider The Reassembled Man the story of how a regular loser becomes an alpha male, Harold Robbins-type protagonist. Our “hero” is Ed Berner, a 38 year-old sap who has been beaten down by life. Married to a shrew, the father of two prepubescent kids, Ed makes a moderate living as a copywriter at a Manhattan ad agency. Yep, just like Darrin on Bewitched -- and really, this novel is very much like a twisted episode of Bewitched. Like, if Darrin had asked Sam to make him ultra-human, and then decided to start sleeping around with every woman he met.

Kastle doesn’t make us spend too long with the loser version of Ed. This in fact might be one of the novel’s failings; Ed’s later actions come off as so self-centered that the book quickly descends into an endless string of softcore sexcapades, Ed living out the dreams previously denied him. But at any rate, as the novel opens Ed goes out for an evening drive, and comes to days later, having driven all the way from New York to New Mexico.

He’s been brought here by the Druggish, aliens who apparently look like Japanese Beetles, only human sized. Kastle well captures the purported experiences of UFO abductees, with Ed coming to himself as he sits in his parked car overtop a hole in the New Mexico desert, out of which pops these giant beetles; the ensuing dialog with the aliens occurs with a sort of casual-meets-bizarre vibe.

The aliens (who initially speak in beatnik, having assumed it was the standard Earth language from their research) inform Ed that he’s been chosen to be their “recorder” of life on Earth. They wanted an average guy living an average life, and Ed fit the bill. In exchange they will grant him his wishes; anything Ed has previously longed for will be given him.

Ed’s checklist is pretty basic. He wants to be better looking, he wants all of his hair back, he wants to be stronger, he wants women to find him attractive, he wants to have a lot of sex, and he wants a bigger dick. Oh, and he wants the ability to persuade people, and maybe even some empath powers to boot.

Ed emerges from this a superman, very similar to Tony Twin, from TNT. Kastle loses me here, though, because the Druggish make it clear that they want Ed to be an “average” human, and though they say they can only boost his inherent potential (in other words, they can’t make him fly or anything, because humans can’t fly), Ed still comes out of this a not-very-human being, able to read and influence thoughts and capable of superhuman feats, from lifting cars with one hand to breaking long-jump records with ease.

The Druggish have removed themselves from Ed’s memory – something they’d told him they’d do, so as to assure an unbiased report from him – so he comes back to himself in this new and improved body here in New Mexico with no idea how he got here. Pretty soon Ed gets to take his new body out for a spin with all the expected tropes; he nearly beats to death a pair of would-be robbers and quickly talks an attractive waitress into leaving work and going to his hotel room for some sex!

This first sex scene is just a taste of what the novel will become, just an endless string of sequences where Ed will meet some girl, affect her thoughts with his own so that she’s overcome with lust for him, and then take her to his place where he will bang her for several hours. Again just like Tony Twin, Ed is insastiable and can last for hours and hours, wearing out women until they’re in a stupor of ecstasy. He also apparently has a sadomasochistic bent, and Kastle hints at “experiments” Ed will put various women through. De Sade is even mentioned. But again due to the era it was published, the novel does not get into details.

Ed quickly discovers he can control others. He takes care of his previously-domineering wife, satisfying her with Herculean bouts of sex to the point where she’s in a daze. Meanwhile Ed sets his sights on Gladys, the attractive next-door neighbor with the loutish husband. This scenario is given the most setup of all of Ed’s conquests, as he goes to great lengths to get the couple over to his place for some barbecue and brandy, ensuring that Ed’s wife and Gladys’s husband pass out so Ed and Gladys can be alone.

His new powers also give Ed an advantage in the workplace. Whereas before he was a nonentity, by the end of his first week Ed has gotten his old boss fired and has taken over the department. This is very Bewitched/Mad Men as Ed hobknobs with wealthy clients and attempts to win over their accounts. But Ed discovers one strange drawback to his new condition – he can no longer handle booze; just the thought of drinking it is enough to make him puke. Which makes it pretty unfortunate that his agency mostly deals with licquor accounts!

Another thing Ed learns is that he quickly becomes sick of women once he’s conquered them. Again, the novel is very repetitive with Ed going from one woman to another, and you’re left with the unpleasant thought that the majority of these women are sleeping with him because Ed has influenced their thoughts. Once Gladys has been moved to the background, the biggest romance in Ed’s new life is Beth, a pretty 18 year-old heiress who is much wiser than her years would imply; after one night with Ed she calls to tell him that, while she likes him, she has a feeling she’s been used somehow. Beth is easily the strongest female character in the novel, and Ed soon becomes self-conscious around her, as she’s the only one who appears able to detect that there’s something different about him.

Meanwhile Ed discovers a much bigger problem with being a recorder for the Druggish. Right before landing a huge account, Ed loses his mind, steals a car, and comes to days later in New Mexico. Turns out his reports to the Druggish will be monthly; when the allotted time is up – which, remember, Ed will never know because the Druggish erase themselves from Ed’s memory – Ed will drop whatever he is doing, find the closest means of transportation, and get to New Mexico, where the Druggish will be waiting for him, all of it timed to their busy interplanetary-traveling schedule.

When reunited with the Druggish Ed remembers all – and instantly realizes that his life will have problems. What if he’s overseas when the monthly call comes to return to New Mexico? Since he’ll have no memory of the Druggish, he’ll blindly go on with his life, not realizing that once a month he’ll be expected to drop everything and get to New Mexico, where he’ll remain for days.

The Druggish give Ed more problems. Since their “recorder” is such valuable property, they instill deep fears in Ed of anything that might kill him; now he’s terrified to fly, and he can only drive his brand-new Triumph sportscar at 30 miles an hour due to his terror that he’ll crash it and die. And forget about taking on armed robbers or bullies anymore. But again, since the Druggish have wiped his memory, Ed has no idea why he’s so afraid of everything, just like he can’t understand how he got this new body and new skills.

But as mentioned, the novel by this point has fallen into a mire of repetitive situations. It’s salvaged though by Kastle’s masterful prose. Also, as would be expected he has more up his sleeve than delivering a wish-fulfillment fantasy. It doesn’t take long to realize that The Reassembled Man is really a morality play, the story of what happens when the male id is allowed to run rampant.

Ed Berner is not a hero, and Kastle doesn’t present him as one. Indeed you soon feel sorry for the other characters he manipulates and takes advantage of. But as the narrative moves on Ed begins to realize the errors of his ways, and also focuses on bettering himself – one advantage of his new form is that he requires little sleep, and so he spends many nights up reading the classics and philosophy.

Just as you realize it can’t go on much longer (sort of like this review), Kastle pulls out all the stops, delivering another of his dark comedy showpieces where Ed must drink a glass of fine brandy as part of the fulfillment of a new account – a scene that goes down with comically disastrous results. From here Kastle quickly wraps up his narrative, with some last-second changes of mind from the Druggish and a better future for Ed.

The Reassembled Man isn’t a masterpiece, but it’s enjoyable. Its biggest failing is that it starts off so strong, with a reborn Ed Berner living out every guy’s fantasy – getting the upper hand on bullies, telling his boss where to shove it, being desired by every woman he meets – but it soon falls into a rut.

Kastle must’ve realized some opportunities himself, as in 1975 he rewrote about 80% of the novel and published it as Edward Berner Is Alive Again!, a hardcover-only obscurity which I’ve just gotten via InterLibrary Loan. I look forward to seeing how different it is from its original incarnation.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Ladies Of The Valley (aka Dirty Movies)


Ladies of the Valley, by Herbert Kastle
May, 1980 Dell Books
(Published in the UK as Dirty Movies, 1979)

This is one of the best novels I've ever read. Today Herbert Kastle is mostly remembered for his mid-'60s sci-fi novel The Reassembled Man, a book which sported a Frank Frazetta cover. But like many other genre authors in the later 1960s, Kastle jumped over to mainstream fiction in the wake of Harold Robbins's vast success. And Kastle succeeded; his 1969 novel The Moviemaker was a bestseller. From then on, Kastle never looked back, releasing a steady stream of mainstream novels up to his death in 1987. As usual with this shitty modern world, Kastle's material is largely forgotten, which is a dire shame. It boggles my mind that something as truly great as Ladies of the Valley could be so forgotten.

In the Dell paperback edition shown here, the book is spun as a typical sexy Hollywood novel, but there's a lot more afoot. There is none of the glitz and glamor of a "typical" Hollywood novel. In fact, one could argue that Ladies of the Valley is more along the lines of Nathanael West's Day of the Locust. For this is a novel that plumbs the sordid depths of Hollywood -- every character is sick or perverted or depraved, some awful events transpire, the filmmaking business is revealed to be a soul-killing den of corruption, and pretty much everyone suffers in some horrible fashion. And this is a novel that pulls no punches. It's as graphic can be in the many, many sex and violence scenes, and since some twisted stuff occurs (rendered all the more shocking as its relayed in such casual fashion), the average reader might not have the stomach for it.

The core of the novel is about the making of the first major-budgeted, major studio-released XXX film, but rather than dealing much with the film itself the narrative is more focused on the sleazy doings of the various parties involved, as well as the "jinx" which soon casts a pall over the production. Don Baylis is at the center of it all, though he wishes otherwise: Baylis, in his fifties and recovering from a recent heart attack, is the author of the novel (Galt's Island) upon which this film will be based. It's not hard to see Baylis as Kastle's stand-in. Baylis is the author of several mainstream novels which have sold reasonably well but most of which are now out of print; he has come to Hollywood like many other authors to make true on the many offers of film deals for his various books. The latest deal, for Galt's Island, appears to be the most real; a trio of producers offer him significant money and percentage points for a film they are certain will reap mountains of profit, as they have decided to actually show the hardcore sex scenes which take place in the novel, a Hollywood first.

Baylis though isn't sure he wants his name associated with this, but the promise of at least a million dollars sways him. He has other problems besides; his heart is in bad shape, and he's not sure how long he can survive. Plus he has problems romantic; over the years he has evolved a relationship with the stunning actress Cecily Warren, a brunette bombshell who too loves Don (despite sleeping around in exchange for cash with a few men), and who, most problematically, is up for the leading female role in Galt's Island -- a role which will entail her having onscreen and very real sex with the leading man.

Cecily has gotten this leading role from Fred Gower, one of the three producers. (She's slept with him to get it, of course...all of the actresses prostitute themselves throughout the novel.) Gower is a true slimebag; he routinely calls over actresses to his Beverley Hills mansion and, using "magic" (his phrase for doping them with Qualudes), has sex with them in a special room in which he can secretly film the events. These films are shot by Bub, Fred's black "houseboy" and only true friend; together the two men smoke dope and get drunk and together share Fred's various conquests; Fred has a taste for young boys, too, and is always on the lookout for fresh meat. (I told you there were some slimeballs in this novel!)

As for Cecily, she does love Don, but her heart is set on becoming a famous actress and she's already 31, so she feels time is running out. Plus she has a 12 year-old son, Johnny, who is as troubled as the other characters here. Johnny is the result of Cecily's half-assed single-parenting, a kid raised on TV reruns who can barely read and who obsesses over sex. He also has strange feelings for his mother, feelings of confusion -- understandable really because Cecily is described by one character as a cross between Marilyn Monroe and Linda Lovelace, and pretty much every guy she meets falls hard for her.

There are other characters...a screenwriter who happens to be a serial killer and who targets Cecily as a future kill; the leading man, a Charlton Heston-type famous in the '50s for his Biblical pictures but now so desperate for a return to glory that he will have sex on camera; Cecily's sanitarium-imprisoned sister Teresa who wants to escape to punish her sister for "stealing" her chance at fame; a former Mafia don who uses his women to satisfy his old gangster friends and sends them to cathouses when he's through with them; a nubile actress up for the other hardcore part in Galt's Island who also likes Don Baylis and so attempts to blackmail Cecily so as to get her out of the picture.

You see, pretty much every character here is despicable in some fashion. But the magic Kastle works with them is such that you like every single one of them, no matter what horrifying thing they do. I've read tons of books which supposedly got to the core of characterization, that were praised for creating three-dimensional fictional beings, but not a one of them has matched Ladies of the Valley.

In the midst of the sleaze and sin, Kastle drops some genuinely emotional moments. There's a lot of heartbreak here, and I'm a man with a heart of stone. Cecily and her son Johnny's relationship is one such moment, the true love they have for one another, and Cecily's knowledge that she's doing the boy wrong with her bad parenting. Or the love affair between Don and Cecily, which goes through the wringer (in ways too many and too insane to mention). But most touching is the subplot in which Bub, Fred Gower's houseboy, finds salvation in a wayward child whom Bub has inadvertently caused to be fatherless; the scenes with Bub and this kid, Jason, are some of the most moving I've read. "Sentimentalism" is one of the hidden strengths of trash fiction, and when used correctly it can be quite effective, as here.

But the sensational, exploitative stuff reigns supreme. I can't tell you how many times I laughed aloud during Ladies of the Valley, as already-insane scenes would just get more and more insane. It's like Kastle wanted to see if he could keep topping himself, and in each case he succeeded. The way he brings together various characters and subplots is masterful and a true joy to experience. Yet despite the over-the-top element everything is grounded in cold reality. And though this is a novel of twisted people doing cruel things, there is a golden light on the horizon; like a true Old Testament scribe, Kastle punishes the evil and rewards the just.

When I first discovered Ladies of the Valley, I was struck by its similarity to another trash fiction classic, James Robert Baker's 1988 magnum opus Boy Wonder. And, having now actually read the novel, I can say that these two books go hand-in-hand. I'm certain Baker was familiar with Kastle's novel. There are just too many similarities: cursed films, serial killers involved with the productions, a twisted desire to keep going further and further over the top. Cecily even nicknames her son Johnny "Boy Wonder!" Also, both authors are pros at tying together various plot strands. It's a toss-up which book is better. Both novels are parodies of Hollywood novels, but Boy Wonder is an intentional, obvious parody -- you can see Baker winking at you throughout. Kastle however maintains a dead-eye glare. And so, even though his novel doesn't reach the ludicrous heights of Baker's, it's actually more affecting.

Kastle was an American author, but it appears he was more famous in the UK. There Ladies of the Valley was published under the more-appropriate title Dirty Movies, featuring a snazzy wraparound cover: