BULLETS, BROADS, BLACKMAIL & BOMBS >> The Dude Abides

THE BIG LEBOWSKI is one of those films that after I saw it in the theater, I could not wait to see it again. It’s probably the funniest of the Coen brothers’ movies. The ashes scene alone could make anyone blow milk through their nose. At its center was a scruffy lovable schlep, and this column is all about those types of guys, be it ’60s radicals who want their due, or a retired spy who is more Columbo than James Bond.

FREAKY DEAKY by Elmore Leonard — To me, the best kind of Leonard novel is centered on a small group of people — just look at RUM PUNCH, THE SWITCH, BANDITS and even the latest, ROAD DOGS. From 1988, FREAKY DEAKY deals with another small group, with five of them going back to the tumultuous times of the 1960s.

Bombmaking radicals Robin and Skip are the main twosome. It’s now the 1980s, where they meet up again after all these years. Skip is making his living doing special effects for movies, while Robin is still stuck in the ’60 mind set. She believes that they are owed something for the time they served back in the day. Robin not only talked the talk; she and Skip blew up buildings to get their points across. She has finally figured out who put the finger on them that sent them to prison, so she wants revenge and money.

Enter three people from their past, including brothers Mark and Woody. Back then, Mark would talk a good game just to see how many girls he could pull, while Woody just drank himself into a stupor. Now Woody is wealthy, while Mark has to make do living off the scraps his brother gives him. Then there is Woody’s chauffeur, a former Black Panther named Donnell who takes his crap, thinking he will hit a payday once his boss dies. A cop named Chris has transferred from the bomb squad to the sex crimes department. His first case is the rape of a woman named Greta, whose assailant was none other than Woody.

This is pitch-perfect Leonard, since it’s more about the character interactions than a giant plot. The main plot is that Robin’s giant plan goes horribly wrong real quick, but she is not the type to give up, even if there is no reason any of it should work. It’s a fun ride where Leonard pokes fun at the radical types.

THE INSCRUTABLE CHARLIE MUFFIN by Brian Freemantle — Don’t let the back-cover copy of this 1979 book fool you: There is barely any spying going on; it’s more a detective novel. The only spy element is our main character, Charlie Muffin, who is far from the spying game, especially since he burned every bridge he could in the two previous novels.

This time, Charlie is called upon by a friend who knows he is alive and well. He needs Charlie to investigate a suspicious fire that sunk a luxury liner that was going to be used as a university off the coast of China. The ship was insured completely, and the underwriters feel as though something is rotten with how things went down. It becomes quite apparent to the rumpled and scruffy Charlie that the ship was torched as an inside job, and Communist China had nothing to do with it. But as soon as Charlie puts the pieces together, people start dying in ways that are to look like accidents, including the original underwriter.

Freemantle again plays on the fact that Muffin is not only a fish out of water in Hong Kong, but still a giant thorn in old-school Britian’s side. There are scenes where Charlie is played for some sort of buffoon, only for him to prove he is not only smarter than all of them, but way ahead in his observations. There is a very funny sequence toward the end where someone from his past pops up and can’t believe it’s truly him, since Charlie is in disguise as a senior investigator for the underwriters.

The story moves along quickly and never falters. For people who have not read the first two books, nothing is really spoiled. It was a pleasure to revisit the world of this retired spy.

KILL ALL THE YOUNG GIRLS by Brett Halliday — This 1973 effort is not the original third book for this column. I had planned on reading another Mike Shayne novel, which fit the theme better. But as I was reading TOO FRIENDLY, TOO DEAD, the page numbers suddenly went from page 30 to page 62. This was not a case of the book falling apart — it just literally skipped that far, with no chunks of missing pages in between. That’s a shame, because it was ghostwritten by Dennis Lynds and dealt with a gold-digging wife and a poisoned husband.

So I went back to the stack of Shaynes and looked for one that might fit. Since this one deals with a movie producer, I went with it. In the film adaptation, Jackie Treehorn was also a producer, and Ben Gazzara is the man. This book comes close to the end of the original Mike Shayne paperbacks, and boy, does it show. They were seriously grabbing at straws, trying to keep readers — not only does it move into graphic violence, which is no shock, but the sex quotient is really amped up with graphic language you would never have seen in the earlier books.

Mike is hired by the son of a big-time producer, because said producer Larry Zion was forced off the road by an enraged actress. The story moves into “let’s introduce some Hollywood starlets who all have the hots for Shayne” mode, only to kill them off in a manor of ways, including mail bombs. The story seems like it was being made up as it went along, pretty much forcing the sex angle at every page.

This reader became incredibly bored by it al, especially when it really boiled down to a studio-takeover plot. Yeah, I bet tons of readers could relate to that: millionaires fighting over a movie studio, and actresses who will do anything to keep the spotlight on them. My advice is stick to the earlier Shaynes. There are some good ghostwritten titles, but this one is not one of them. After this, there were only five more — ’nuff said.

Next time: a Saint, a Puritan and a philosopher king. —Bruce Grossman

Buy them at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF BRIAN FREEMANTLE:
• CHARLIE M by Brian Freemantle
• HERE COMES CHARLIE M by Brian Freemantle

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF BRETT HALLIDAY:
• ARMED … DANGEROUS … by Brett Halliday
• BODIES ARE WHERE YOU FIND THEM by Brett Halliday
• COUNT BACKWARDS TO ZERO by Brett Halliday
• COUNTERFEIT WIFE by Brett Halliday
• FOURTH DOWN TO DEATH by Brett Halliday
• GUILTY AS HELL by Brett Halliday
• MERMAID ON THE ROCKS by Brett Halliday
• MIKE SHAYNE’S TORRID TWELVE by Brett Halliday
• NEVER KILL A CLIENT by Brett Halliday
• SHOOT THE WORKS by Brett Halliday
• TARGET: MIKE SHAYNE by Brett Halliday
• WHAT REALLY HAPPENED by Brett Halliday

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF ELMORE LEONARD:
• THE HUNTED by Elmore Leonard
• MR. MAJESTYK by Elmore Leonard
• ROAD DOGS by Elmore Leonard
• RUM PUNCH by Elmore Leonard
• THE SWITCH by Elmore Leonard

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