Dirty Harry #3: The Long Death

Dirty Harry #3: The Long Death, by Dane Hartman
December, 1981  Warner Books

Ric Meyers wrote this third volume of Dirty Harry, and unlike whoever wrote the sixth volume, he was clearly familiar with the franchise. The Long Death is filled with references to the first three Dirty Harry movies (Sudden Impact hadn’t been released yet), and in many ways it’s almost a sequel to The Enforcer, with characters from that third film making appearances.

But despite the strong sense of feel for the franchise and the careful continuity, The Long Death is jarring when compared to its film predecessors, as for the most part Meyers has written a horror novel. There is a horrific vibe here, from women being abducted and forced into sexual slavery to copious amounts of gore in the plentiful action scenes, and all of it seems out of place in the Dirty Harry mythos. But in a way Meyers here shows the direction the franchise could have taken in the ‘80s; he’s very much aware of the horror boom taking place in the film world (and even has a character discussing the phenomenom at length), and shows how it could be paired up with the cliched “tough cop” genre.

In fact for long portions of The Long Death I thought I was reading one of Meyers’s Ninja Master books, which he was writing at the same time for Warners. That same dark vibe runs throughout, with a focus on the depredations of women; Meyers must’ve been a big fan of the torture porn that ran in the latter sweat mags. He writes very long (very long) sequences of innocent young women being captured, subjugated, bound, beaten, and raped, before their ultimate murder, and usually he writes these scenes from the woman’s perspective, so we can witness her reaction to each and every horror. I have to admit, this sort of stuff isn’t my thing, but I also must admit that Meyers excels in this regard, and at the very least makes you eager to see the villains get their final comeuppance.

We see this horror element in the opening chapter, which features a young female student at Berkley captured on campus grounds and tied up, subjugated, brutalized…on and on it goes, giving the reader a clammy, grimy feeling of unease. As I say, it is like nothing ever depicted in the Dirty Harry films, but very much akin to the horror flicks of the day, or even the sleazy Italian slasher movies of the ‘70s, which are later mentioned in the text. Meyers tries to have his cake and eat it too, with frequent condemnations of ultraviolence in horror films and how Harry himself doesn’t like gory films. So it’s safe to say there’s a bit of in-jokery going on throughout.

Speaking of Harry, we meet him in a prolonged action scene that is very well done, but again more spectacular than anything in the films. Here Harry has become more like a one-man army of the sort soon to be featured in ‘80s action movies; throughout the novel he finds himself up against multiple heavily-armed opponents, Harry dishing out bloody payback with his customary .44 Magnum. And Meyers doesn’t cheat on the gore, with copious heads exploding under Magnum impacts – again, more violent than anything in the films.

Meyers does pull the same stunt the mysterious author of the sixth volume did: Harry’s working on a case when we meet him, he’s yanked off it by his “stupid chief” boss, put on another case…and soon discovers the two cases are related. Anyway Harry is introduced in an over-the-top action sequence which has him taking out a trio of child pornographers who are hiding in a big aquarium. The shootout goes all over the place, Meyers incorporating the setting into the action; of course one of the bastards becomes shark bait. The recurring joke of Harry’s heavyset partner Fatso Devlin always being ten steps behind Harry – and never surprised by the violence and gore that trails in his wake – is introduced here as well.

Harry is very much in the vein of his film counterpart; Meyers doesn’t try to expand on his emotions or feelings or anything. He’s just a grizzled cop with a healthy disrespect for authority; there’s a lot of traded barbs with his chief, Captain Avery. About the only thing that doesn’t ring true is the eleventh hour development of romantic feelings between Harry and a pretty Vice cop named Lynn McConnell. Meyers introduces her early in the book, has her bantering with Harry and giving as good as she gets, then later on brings her into the main case and having Harry worry over her. However, there’s no sex for Harry and Lynn spends the majority of the novel off-page.

Capt. Avery insists that Harry be taken off the child porn case, which is run by a mysterious individual known as “The Professor,” as he’s reportedly a teacher of some sort. Harry is instead put on a case involving the black militant group Uhuru which is run by Big Ed Mohamid, as seen in The Enforcer. Meyers doesn’t do much to expand on this, with Big Ed reluctant to talk to Harry – the corpse of a young white girl has been found in Uhuru’s headquarters, and of course it’s the young girl we readers saw abducted and killed in the first chapter. Harry immediately suspects something’s going on, and ultimately he will be proven correct – the true villains of the plot are trying to bait Uhuru into starting a race war so as to divert attention from their kidnapping-white slavery setup. And of course Harry is alone in his convictions, with Avery insisting that Big Ed and Uhuru are the culprits who raped and killed the girl.

Bringing in this militant radical aspect allows Meyers to incorporate more gun-blazing action than you’d expect in a cop novel. Sometimes in surprsing ways, like when Harry visits a film class at Berkley and, after a lot of exposition from the teacher on the films of Dario Argento, finds himself ambushed by a trio of black militants with assault rifles. There’s also another action scene where Harry races into the Uhuru building while it’s being attacked by the cops, so he has to dodge bullets from both the militants and his own colleagues. It’s all entertaining but a lot of these action scenes just go on too long, with too much detail on Harry doing this or that – sort of like in Stark, where the overwhelming narrative description slows down what should be fast-moving action.

Meyers has a little fun playing with the Dirty Harry mythos; when Harry has a confrontation with one of the main villains in a packed disco club, the villain asks Harry, “Do you feel lucky?” To which Harry will ultimately respond: “That’s my line, punk.” And speaking of a disco club, bizarrely enough this is what the white slavers operate out of, their leader being a flat-chested woman (flat-chested = evil: men’s adventure 101, folks). The finale however plays out at their separate headquarters, a remote villa on an island which turns out to be a house of traps. Again the horror feel is strong, as the place even has a torture chamber with an iron maiden. And again Meyers incorporates the setting into the action.

Overall The Long Death is an action and gore-filled yarn with horror elements, and Meyers keeps the story moving. He does introduce too many concepts he doesn’t much exploit – Lynn McConnell being one, to such an extent that we don’t even get to see what happens between her and Harry at novel’s end – but he definitely takes his job seriously and doesn’t just phone in a middling “tough cop” yarn a la the guy who wrote the lame sixth volume.