I’m still on the ‘how did it all happen’ trail this week. I’ll be focussing again on KISS OF DEATH, my 7th DS Heckenburg novel, which today completes its first month of publication, during which time it has accrued some truly fabulous reviews (many thanks to all those who’ve had their say), and we’ll be zoning in specifically on Heck, examining the various cinematic influences that lie behind him.
Also on the subject of dark, scary thrillers, I’ll
be reviewing and discussing Joe R. Lansdale’s seriously frightening crime
novel, THE NIGHTRUNNERS, in what I hope is my usual forensic detail. If you’re only here for the Lansdale review, no worries – you’ll find it, as always, at the
lower end of today’s blogpost. There’s nothing to stop you zooming straight on down
there. But if you’ve got a bit more time on your hands, perhaps you’ll be interested in
reading about …
Heck’s origins
Readers often ask me which other crime authors are my
benchmarks?
Which of those writers who focus on the seamy side of
life are the ones who’ve most influenced me in the writing of my own novels?
I’d imagine that lots of guys and girls in my situation get asked similar
questions, and like me, will respond by reeling off lists of the most
impressive names in the business – because we’ve all read widely in the field,
and we’d be lying if we didn’t admit that we’ve all probably taken something
from every great crime novel that’s gone before us, not to mention the masterclass cop
characters we’ve so easily been able to picture thanks to how well realised
they were on the written page.
In response, I think it’s true to say that there are
probably four celluloid cops (or cop situations) that have had this kind of
direct impact on me; two films and two TV shows.
That might be an embarrassing thing for some writers to
admit, because we are supposed to be literary types who, deep down, should only
be affected by genuine greatness, though I’d contend that greatness can be
found on the screen as well as in book-form.
Anyway, here we go. The two cop movies and two cop TV
shoes that most made an impression on me and were most instrumental in the
development of my character, Heck, are, in chronological order: Bullitt, The
French Connection, The Sweeney and The Shield.
Aside from the fact that these are all essentially slick,
quick, tough-talking action thrillers, set in contemporary times and an
unforgiving urban setting, in actual fact they could not be more different from
each other, and they’ve had very different effects on my work.
First, the movies …
BULLITT (1968), directed by Peter Yates, starred Steve
McQueen as Frank Bullitt, a San Francisco police inspector in charge of a Mafia
super-grass who is shot and critically wounded shortly before he’s due to give
evidence. Bullitt needs to track the killers and whoever gave them their
orders, but increasingly upsets his superiors as the enquiry threatens to lead
him into ever higher places in the city’s administration.
One of the first ever cop thrillers to examine the often
real connections between organised crime and the establishment, Bullitt is high
on action but low on violence, casting a sexy and athletic film star in a very
cerebral role, which sees him working his way through a highly complex
investigation by following his instincts rather than his orders. Readers of the
Heck books will probably not need an explanation from me as to what kind of
influence this exerted. While the outsider cop is a regular fixture in crime
fiction – and Heck is no different, loving his ‘roving commission’ – he often
develops theories based on his own analysis of crime scenes and crime
situations which his bosses can’t buy into. Much of the drama and tension in
the Heck books stems from the balancing act he must perform between following a
system he often suspects is bent or incompetent, or both, and following his own
gut.
The reason why this one was influential may not be
immediately obvious. While Frank Bullitt was a handsome hero, Popeye Doyle is a
slob and a boor, and unpopular with his colleagues, and that is not the way
I’ve envisaged Heck. Heck is usually affable and has one or two friends on the
force, even if not necessarily among the brass. But he and Doyle share a dogged
nature; it’s that instinct thing again, that old-fashioned police hunch
business. In The French Connection, Popeye only gets to the real bad guys after
a prolonged and convoluted enquiry, which many of his fellow officers oppose
because they simply don’t trust him. And that’s been the story of Heck’s life
in all seven novels so far. Neither he nor Doyle have an unfailing faith in
their own judgement, but they’re both of them stubborn and bullish enough to
keep advancing along an increasingly difficult track despite growing evidence
that it’s likely to be a dead-end.
And now the TV shows …
THE SWEENEY (1975/78), made by Thames Television, starred
John Thaw as Jack Regan, a northern copper displaced to London, and now a DI in
Scotland Yard’s elite Flying Squad, a unit who exist solely to tackle the
city’s gangs of armed robbers.
The situation was the bigger deal for me here, rather
than the actual character. While I certainly took some influences for Heck from
John Thaw’s electrifying portrayal of Regan – I referenced it directly in KISS OF DEATH, the exiled northerner, lonely and cut off from his family,
perennially unlucky in love – ultimately, I was more interested in his
relationship with the underworld. By its nature, the real-life Flying Squad had
to wheel and deal to get results; it was interested in big fish, not little
ones. Therefore, unofficial alliances were made. They relied heavily on
informers, against whose own criminal activities they often turned a blind eye.
To some, this was common sense policing; to others it was corruption. The
Flying Squad of the 1970s did eventually come unstuck when it got embroiled in
some seriously questionable practises, and this also happens in the TV series.
But in the Heck books, which are set in the here and now, we never take it that
far. Nevertheless, Heck refuses to play by the rules; he knows every trick in
the book, which may include strong-arming criminals and even blackmailing them.
At the same time, he makes allegiances with lesser villains in order to pull in
the more dangerous ones. Heck is not corrupt, but in the heavily bureaucratic
world of 21st century policing, all this would be complete anathema. So, even
though Heck’s methods gain him extraordinary results, as Regan’s did back in
the 1970s, we always get the feeling that, at any moment, his time could be up.
Based on the real-life Rampart unit, who in the 1990s
were the centre of a huge misconduct scandal, Strike Team members are openly
portrayed as corrupt, killing some of their targets, framing and stealing from
others, robbing criminal strongholds and even, on one occasion, murdering a
fellow police officer who’s grown suspicious about them. However, such was the
skill with which the show was written, directed and performed, that you
endlessly rooted for these maverick antiheroes, even though you knew it would
at some point come crashing down in flames – as indeed it did. I should say
straight away that there is no aspect of Vic Mackey in Mark Heckenburg. Mackey
is ruthless, violent and sadistic. Oh, he is charismatic, and he has his caring
side with his family, but when he’s on the job, he’s an out-and-out hoodlum.
But what I inherited from The Shield was not the character but the milieu.
The borough of Farmington is a fictional corner of LA,
where every kind of crime and vice is rampant. Psychos, weirdos and creeps
populate every street; there are serial killers, gangbangers, child-molesters
and pimps. Drugs and disease are everywhere; there is horrendous squalor. And
yet there is colour to all this. In the fashion of James Bond or even Batman, The
Shield features some of the most wonderfully deadly and deranged villains I’ve
ever seen on television: the Jesus lookalike who collects people’s feet (whether
they’re alive or dead); the handsome, intelligent Texan who relentlessly
murders needy women; the scar-faced gangster who burns his rivals at the stake.
It’s perhaps no coincidence that in the Heck books, we try to offer a
cross-section of villainy, but that it’s always (or so we hope) memorable and
outlandish. The inspiration for that could lie with Bond and Batman, but it’s
mostly the case, I think, that it lies with The Shield.
THRILLERS, CHILLERS, SHOCKERS AND KILLERS …
An ongoing series of reviews of dark fiction (crime,
thriller, horror and sci-fi) – both old and new – that I have recently read and
enjoyed. I’ll endeavour to keep the SPOILERS to a minimum; there will certainly
be no given-away denouements or exposed twists-in-the-tail, but by the
definition of the word ‘review’, I’m going to be talking about these books in
more than just thumbnail detail, extolling the aspects that I particularly
enjoyed … so I guess if you’d rather not know anything at all about these
pieces of work in advance of reading them yourself, then these particular posts
will not be your thing.
Outline
It’s Galveston, Texas, in the mid-1980s, and
modern-minded, well-heeled couple, Becky and Montgomery Jones, should be living
the dream. Professional academics, they both have good quality of life, a
steady income, are a well-matched, physically handsome pair and, as lovebirds
since their college days, they care for each other deeply. It should be a match
made in Heaven, but in actual fact their blissful life has been ruined by a
dreadful incident approximately four months prior to this narrative,
when their house was broken into while Monty was away, and Becky savagely raped
by a former student of hers, Clyde Edson, who wasn’t just a juvenile delinquent
but a fledgling serial killer already known locally as the ‘Rapist Ripper’.
Edson was later apprehended and committed suicide while
remanded in jail, but of course Becky’s recovery from such an ordeal was never
going to rely solely on the hand of justice. The deep psychological wounds have
destroyed her pleasant suburban existence. She now lives in fear of the night,
endures harrowing nightmares and bizarre premonitions, is completely unable to
enjoy sex, and has ambivalent feelings about her husband because of his
previous political stance; before this event, Montgomery Jones was a liberal
through and through – he believed in tackling the causes of crime rather than
cracking down on it, he looked to rehabilitation rather than punishment, he
didn’t regard Galveston’s underage hoodlums as thugs and predators so much as
disadvantaged kids who need a helping hand rather than a good smack around the
head.
All of this has changed now, of course – except that it’s
too late.
Even though Monty wasn’t present at the time of the rape
and could have done nothing to prevent it, he now regards his former
‘enlightened’ attitude as a kind of moral cowardice, and is inwardly repelled
by his previous pretence of intellectual superiority when in reality he
suspects that he has always been unnerved by the prospect of taking a tough stand.
He particularly agonises about an incident from his childhood, when he was too
frightened to intervene as a local bully force-fed his kid-brother a dog turd.
What’s even worse from Monty’s point of view is that he suspects Becky thinks
this about him too, even if she won’t say it. Just being in his wife’s
melancholy presence now unmans him.
It looks as if their relationship, once so strong, has
fatally fractured … until late that October, when in a desperate effort to
patch things up, Monty takes Becky out to a friend’s cabin, so they can get
some peace and quiet. It’s an idyllic, pine-clad location in the East Texas
wilderness, and the crisp autumn weather is beautiful. For the first time in a
while, the couple begin to relax again in each other’s company, even though
there is still much lost ground to make up.
However, this hesitation to resume their former status is
actually the least of their problems.
Because unbeknown to the Joneses, several members of
Clyde Edson’s gang – all of them complicit in the Rapist Ripper murders –
eluded capture, including his psychopathic second-in-command, Brian Blackwood,
and their reign of Hell is far from over.
Blackwood still remains in awe of his deceased ex-leader,
viewing him as a kind of Nietzchean superman – primarily because he never let
human sentiment hamper him when he was out to get whatever he wanted. Despite
this, Blackwood has no initial motivation to go back and finish off Becky
Jones, their last victim … until, one feverish midnight, when he receives a
nightmarish visitation from his former friend, now reduced to the status of
demonic ventriloquist dummy seated on the knee of the satanic ‘God of the
Razor’, an horrific being who literally wears a coat made from flayed human
flesh and shoes made out of guillotined human heads (and who will go on to appear
several times more in Lansdale’s work).
Whether this is a genuine supernatural event or simply a
figment of Blackwood’s deranged mind is basically irrelevant, as Edson demands
a continuation of their previous crime: a full-scale attack on Becky Jones,
culminating – after the gang have sexually defiled her for as long as they care
to – in the removal of her heart. If anyone gets in the way, like her husband
of course, he/they can also be dispatched.
Impressed by this, and by the promise of dominion in a
hellish afterlife – and if ever his enthusiasm for this flags, egged on
aggressively by Edson’s damned soul, which now seems to possess him – Blackwood
gets the gang back together and they go on the prowl in their distinctive black
’66 Chevy, seeking out the Joneses and slaughtering anyone who even threatens
to hinder their progress. They are so bent on this mission, and so ruthless
with anyone who might have information for them (strewing carnage every which
way), that it isn’t long before they learn about the isolated cabin where the
injured couple are trying to recuperate …
Review
It probably isn’t going too far to say that The Nightrunners
put Texas writer Joe R. Lansdale on the map. This is a very early novel of his,
originally written in 1982 as Night of the Goblins, but since then he’s become
a literary landmark in his own right in the overlapping fields of horror,
crime, Rural Noir, Southern Gothic etc.
It isn’t a particularly long novel, and nor is it likely
to educate or edify you if you’re looking for something highbrow. In truth,
this is a long way from Lansdale’s best work; he himself has repeatedly
reminded folk that it’s an early effort and has voiced surprise that it
continues to draw positive reviews. But what I will say is that, even now,
three decades after first publication, it’s one headlong thrust of a narrative
and a hell of a page-turner.
It’s also brutal and nasty … and I mean excessively so.
Okay, there thankfully isn’t much here in the way of torture-porn. But this is
visceral violent crime fiction at its most unforgiving.
The antagonists are beyond the pale in terms of amoral,
purposeless depravity, and their main targets almost impossibly innocent and
genteel. Other tougher, worldlier characters are introduced on the side of
right – streetwise cop, Ted Olsen, and gang-members with a conscience, Jimmy
and Angela – but from the very beginning you just know that this southern-fried
fury ride is only going to end in one final and massive confrontation between
the civilisation-softened Joneses and the walking bunch of disenfranchised
aberrations which is all that remains of Clyde Edson’s murder gang.
It’s a dark and horrible atmosphere; I’ll make no bones
about that. Even early in the book, when it’s mainly about the Joneses trying
to restore their equilibrium in a place that seems beyond danger, the reader’s
sense of growing dread is palpable – Blackwood and his boys have commenced the
hunt for their prey equipped with nothing more than animal cunning and naked
bloodlust, but draw steadily nearer to them with the turn of each page.
I don’t want to say too much more, certainly not about
the explosive finale, which you obviously won’t need me to tell you is not
going to end well for any members of our ensemble cast, either the good or the
evil. But suffice to say that it hasn’t been likened to the ultra-violent
British movie, Straw Dogs, for nothing.
The message of The Nightrunners isn’t an especially
complex one. Lansdale isn’t setting out to explore a moral conundrum here.
Quite the opposite, in fact. Montgomery Jones’ earlier self – the guy who
tried to rationalise the cause and effect of societal breakdown in modern-day
America – is soon jettisoned in favour of the raw, frightened and somewhat more
dangerous animal he becomes later in the book; and though there are hints that
some of these problems are the result of small-town boredom (kids like Jimmy with
nothing to do but hang around pool rooms all day) and failure to compromise by
those who are supposedly older and wiser (Angela’s mother kicking her out for
having pre-marital sex, and thus driving her daughter into the enclave of the
gang), the real corruption here is attributed fairly and squarely to an
unknowable supernatural force, the Razor God, and though this may be a metaphor
for insanity, it is clearly a power beyond Blackwood’s ability to resist and
one for which no-one involved can really carry the blame.
The Nightrunners won’t be to everyone’s taste – but it
cuts to the quick. With the best intentions in the world, we probably like to
believe that violence is not and can never be the only answer to our problems …
but, like it or not, there are always going to be occasions when it’s an
option, and perhaps, if we are being pushed hard enough at the time, an option
we’ll even find desirable.
As usual, here are my thoughts re. casting should The
Nightrunners ever get the film or TV treatment. Purely for the fun of it, here
are my personal picks for the leading roles:
Becky Jones – Ashley Greene
Montgomery Jones – Jimmi Simpson
Brian Blackwood – Chandler Canterbury
Clyde Edson – Cameron Bright
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