The Marksman #16: This Animal Must Die

The Marksman #16: This Animal Must Die, by Frank Scarpetta
March, 1975  Belmont-Tower Books

I definitely have to agree with Lynn Munroe that this sixteenth installment of The Marksman is courtesy George Harmon Smith, as it’s very much in the vein of another Smith novel: Savage Slaughter, which thanks to some tinkering from series editor Peter McCurtin became an installment of The Sharpshooter (apparently without Smith’s knowledge!). In fact, I’d go further and say that This Animal Must Die was written as a sequel to Savage Slaugher – which happened to be published the month before.

To recap, that Sharpshooter yarn, which clearly started life as a Marksman yarn, featured “Johnny Rock” doing a job for the CIA. Well, This Animal Must Die continues the trend, with Philip Magellan arriving in Naples when we meet him, wondering where his CIA backup is – and also he’s here thanks to a “63-page document” the President(!!) has given him. We’re never told what exactly this document says, but boy we’re often reminded that it’s sixty-three pages long. Why Smith came up with such an exact number is just yet another baffling mystery in the Marksman/Sharpshooter universe. But anyway the President himself has tasked number one wanted criminal Philip Magellan with taking out a Mafia boss in Italy.

It’s cool to read this one because you get George Harmon Smith’s unfiltered manuscript, with stuff that was apparently cut out of Savage Slaughter to make it fit into the Sharpshooter mythos. For one, we get the Spider-esque gimmick of Magellan often referred to as “The Marksman” in the narrative, ie in italics, which of course brings the flair of an oldschool pulp. But Smith tries to temper Magellan a bit; he keeps the psychotic rough edges of the Russell Smith installments – and Lynn Munroe is likely again correct in his hunch that Harmon Smith edited many of Russell Smith’s manuscripts – but he often has Magellan psyching himself up to do them. Like, even when he has to drug someone and stash ‘em in the trunk of a car, this version of Magellan “hates” it, whereas the Russell Smith version had all the emotional content of a Terminator.

After an aborted mob hit in which Magellan makes quick, gory work of his enemies with a Browning pistol (his choice gun this time around), our hero is whisked away by a hotstuff blonde. Her name is Toni and she’s very mysterious but Magellan’s certain she works for the CIA. In fact she works for an Italian-American who wears a mask, operates out of a cathouse, and tells Magellan that he was extradited from the United States years ago but wants to come back. He figures if he can help on this hit of Frank DiCarlo – ie the Mafia chieftan the President wants dead – then he might get passage back to the States. Interestingly, Magellan has made his way here hidden in a coffin as it’s hauled in a hearse through the countryside – perhaps some sort of sub-“literary” trick per Harmon Smith, certainly the most literary of all the Marksman authors. Don’t believe me?

At the roadside, peasants crossed themselves dubiously as the hearse rattled past. The quick dabs of their gnarled fingers across chests and foreheads were more in the nature of signs warding off ill luck than symbolic affirmations of the Christian faith. 

At the end of the valley the hearse began to climb as the road, curving upward in great loops, left the fields and orchards, the vineyards and little towns that lay scattered like toys on the valley floor to bask away the last of their long, hot, breathless Italian afternoon under the westering sun.

That’s right, folks, that’s taken from a Marksman novel.

But literary flourishes aren’t all Smith brings to the table – he brings a heaping helping of sleaze too. This Animal Must Die is the most explicit volume yet in the series, filled to the brim with that lurid mid-‘70s vibe I love so much. Now, Magellan as we know isn’t the most “sensuous” of men’s adventure protagonists, and in most volumes is a strictly business before pleasure type of guy. But the mysterious masked guy offering to help him (the mask being yet another pulpy touch) as mentioned runs out of a cathouse, the best damn cathouse in Naples – indeed all of Italy – and so he sets Magellan up with a steady stream of free tail.

In fact Smith doesn’t just bring us sex – he makes it sleazy and wildly pre-PC as hell; Magellan’s first “gift” is a black hooker who introduces herself, “Black can be beautiful. Do you like to fuck?” To which Magellan responds, “I don’t care to fuck you!” One of the stranger statements you’ll ever hear a men’s adventure protagonist utter. It gets even weirder, and wilder, with it turning into a hate-fuck thing, the hooker first throwing blood on Magellan so he has to take off his clothes(?!), then playing on Magellan being a “Southern Man” (ie of the Neil Young song type). And Magellan plays it right up for her, doling out the dreaded N-word a few times and calling her “slave” before finally screwing her good and proper. It occurs to me that the whole bit could almost be seen as a spoof of the torrid Plantation Lust subgenre that was big at the time – given that Smith was an editor and clearly had some writing chops, I wouldn’t be surprised. Either way, it’s some crazy shit.

Later we’re informed off-hand that the masked man sends Magellan a new woman every night, though we don’t have another “in-depth” sequence until the man takes Magellan up on his (apparently) joking concept that he “wants virgins.” That night Magellan is gifted with a sixteen year old beauty named China Doll who is a veteran whore, and likely this is Smith again catering to the prurient demands of the sleaze reader of the day. First Plantation Lust, now Jailbait Lust. Meanwhile Magellan keeps lusting over Toni, the blonde who rescued him in Naples. Smith keeps this sex scene off-page, only letting us know at the end of the novel it’s a sure thing; otherwise Magellan’s main fling here is the jet-setting wife of none other than DiCarlo, ie the man Magellan has been brought here to kill.

That’s just the sleaze angle; Smith also introduces this bizarro subplot that could come straight out of the other Smith who worked on the series – namely, Russell Smith, whose Magellan (and Sharpshooter) manuscripts were touched by a special kind of madness. The masked man puts Magellan up in the famous “Magellan Castle,” run by batty old women and a loony uncle who is locked in his chamber and howls at the moon every night. This ridiculous cover has Magellan posing as a wealthy Sicilian or somesuch who has come back to take over the “family castle.” Complete with Magellan dressing like a wealthy Italian gadabout and conducting tours of the crumbling castle(!). All this is wacky to say the least and easily could’ve been cut from the novel, but Smith at least tries to pass it off as Magellan going to all this trouble so as to find – and abduct – gorgeous Crocifissa, the never-seen wife of DiCarlo.

This is another callback to the Russell Smith books, as Magellan hoodwinks her into going up to his private chamber and then locks her in there – even though he “hates” doing stuff like this. Sure he does. He’s banging her that very night, but don’t worry, the lady’s hot for him too – we’re told she’s a passionate-blooded Itallian babe and she’s constantly compared to Sophia Loren, only she’s hotter and has a nicer rack. Smith builds up a relationship between the two, with Crocifissa knowing Magellan wants to kill her husband, but Magellan’s so good-looking and so great in the sack, what can she do? Magellan for his part threatens DiCarlo with Crocifissa’s torture and death, vowing he’ll chop off bodyparts and kill her if the mob boss doesn’t give up, and it’s clear that our hero will actually do it if necessary.

There’s a lot of stuff here that brings to mind previous Marksman and Sharpshooter books – like a hit on the laundry owned by Chinese agent Wing Quong. Magellan tortures him before killing him in a scene very similar to one in Smith’s previous Savage Slaughter. The “action climax” is along the lines of the ones Russell Smith and McCurtin would give us – no real dramatic resolution, just Magellan blowing people up from afar. Gore is given a slight more prominence than in other volumes, particularly when it comes to mentioning the “fecal matter” that blows out of gutshots. So far as the sleaze goes, there’s also the usage of the curious term “v-tuft,” ie female pubic hair, and the only other place I can recall encountering this term was in The Marksman #6 – which could be an indication that George Harmon Smith edited some of Peter McCurtin’s manuscripts as well.  Or maybe just that Smith read that McCurtin installment and latched onto the term, who knows.

Otherwise Smith’s writing is very good, with the caveat that he relies too often on adverbs and his characters are prone to exposition. There are some parts where Magellan and Toni exchange “philosophical” quips that are particularly aggravating. Also he lacks consistency in character names in the narrative, which is one of my pet peeves – our hero goes from “Phil” to “Magellan” to “The Marksman” all on the same page, which is pretty sloppy. I mean the characters can call him a host of names, but the narrative voice should stick to just one. Or at least that’s what I think.

But that’s just minor stuff; This Animal Must Die actually comes off like a masterpiece when compared to the other books in the series, most of which seem like speed and booze-fueled first drafts – most likely because that’s what they were.