Bruce Grossman, the regular guy behind this column, is a reading machine, but even those need a break. So filling in is me — Rod Lott! Your humble BOOKGASM editor! — thereby affording myself the opportunity to pull out a few used paperbacks I’ve had for more than a year or two, yet hadn’t read. … What? Oh, you want a theme? Um, howzabout a preponderance of brown and orange on the covers?
THE CLIMACTICON by Harold Livingston — An egotistical ad man of Madison Avenue named Hank Sullivan narrates this 1960 sci-fi satire. He describes himself as a “five-window man” of much importance, and tells us how he got that way: It was all due to the Climacticon. The machine in question measures how “in heat” any given woman is for the guy using it.
After being told about it, Hank convinces the Climacticon’s virginal owner Richard to let him borrow it for a while, and promptly spends the weekend swimming in it. He later demonstrates the gizmo for a client who then goes to the hospital for sex-induced exhaustion after bedding three women at once.
This lands Hank in hot water with his boss, until the then-junior-account-exec explains about the machine. Ad biz being the ad biz, the agency invests $2 million to mass produce the gadget. It’s an immediate smash, of course, with every guy getting crazy laid and every woman arguing against its existence. As Hank puts it, “all hell broke loose,” and he runs afoul of the authorities, raising the attention of the feds.
With an ego-driven, skirt-chasing 1960s ad man as a protagonist, it was impossible not to think of MAD MEN when reading this one. One can picture Don Draper using such a device to his utter advantage, but the book is oddly shy when it comes to the sex department, despite the title and ram-ready premise. Hank chooses to “spare” us the details of his trysts. THE CLIMACTICON was not meant to titillate, but to poke fun at the capitalist, consumerist and feminist revolutions of its time.
It’s oddly spot-on in its depiction of the ad agency (which is rarely the case in movies and TV), it’s heavily dialogue-driven and it’s probably instantly dated, not to mention a little too long in the tooth, even for something so quick and short.
SOMETHING’S DOWN THERE by Mickey Spillane — In 2003, Spillane put down the Hammer and penned one of his few stand-alones, and it finds him treading Peter Benchley territory with a water-based thriller. The protagonist is Mako Hooker, a retired government agent doing the boating-and-fishing thing in Bermuda.
He’s enjoying the lazy life as a trawling ship captain with his Caribbean pal Billy Bright when they witness a boat turn over and go down, with what looks like huge teeth marks on its undercarriage. This being the Bermuda Triangle, it’s not surprising that other accounts of shark sightings start to surface. People — including Hooker’s old employer (aka The Company) — want him to help hunt down this “eater,” but he wants nothing of it.
But sometimes, you don’t get a choice, especially when you live right atop it. Although Hooker is every bit as salty as Hammer, the shark stuff seems alien to Spillane, as if he’s not entirely comfortable with it. Thus, equal time is given to his dealings with The Company, with old mines they find under the sea, and with a Hollywood crew shooting a sea-monster flick, and it’s all delivered with the author’s heavy dose of dialogue.
It’s okay, but no great shakes, and certainly a third longer than it needed to be. Some of that could be trimmed from the elongated setup, which is not as quick as one expects from Spillane. I won’t spoil it, but the last-chapter reveal is awfully hard to swallow. Much easier to swallow? Miller Light, which Hooker plugs. (Aw, Mick, ever the pitchman!)
MURDER ON TRIAL: COURTROOM MYSTERIES FROM ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE AND ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE edited by Cynthia Manson — This 1994 collection isn’t that old, but it’s old enough to be a dime at a used bookstore, which is where I found it. It’s also more dated than its real age indicates, as these kind of paperbacks were published more often back then than they are now. Ellery and Alfie still get the occasional anthology, but not with the regularity they used to.
As this one goes, the verdict is guilty … of being pretty good. For one thing, it covers a wide range of stories old and then-new, even from an author who expired well before either rag got started: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, here represented by the non-Sherlock Holmes story “The Prisoner’s Defense.”
The other 13 tales include a Rumpole number from John Mortimer, a Perry Mason-less episode by Erle Stanley Gardner and works from Cornell Woolrich, Henry Slesar, Jon L. Breen and Lawrence Block. Waitasec on that last one — Block is listed on the cover, but I can’t find his story on any of the pages. He’s even listed on the copyright page as providing “The Ehrengraf Presumption,” but it’s not in my copy. For this felony, I sentence this book to solitary … in my hallway cabinet.
Next time: Wasn’t BLAZING SADDLES a documentary? —Rod Lott
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF MICKEY SPILLANE:
• BLACK ALLEY by Mickey Spillane
• BYLINE: MICKEY SPILLANE by Mickey Spillane, edited by Max Allan Collins and Lynn F. Myers Jr.
• DEAD STREET by Mickey Spillane
• THE DEEP by Mickey Spillane
• THE DELTA FACTOR by Mickey Spillane
• THE ERECTION SET by Mickey Spillane
• THE GOLIATH BONE by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins
• KILLER MINE by Mickey Spillane
• THE KILLING MAN by Mickey Spillane
• THE LAST COP OUT by Mickey Spillane
• THE LONG WAIT by Mickey Spillane
• THE TOUGH GUYS by Mickey Spillane
Related posts:
- BULLETS, BROADS, BLACKMAIL & BOMBS >> Guns N’ Gams
- BULLETS, BROADS, BLACKMAIL & BOMBS >> Hammer and Tongs
- BULLETS, BROADS, BLACKMAIL & BOMBS >> Everyone’s a Winner
- BULLETS, BROADS, BLACKMAIL & BOMBS >> Spillane-a-Mania
- BULLETS, BROADS, BLACKMAIL & BOMBS >> Spillane … ‘Nuff Said!
