Kingpin

Kingpin, by Hugh Miller
October, 1975  New English Library

Sporting one of the greatest covers in the history of mankind, Kingpin was first published in hardcover by NEL in 1974 (with an altogether lame cover, below). It’s a sequel to Miller’s novel The Open City, published by NEL in hardcover in ’73 and paperback in ’74. I picked up the paperback editions of each book several years ago, right around when I started the blog. I intended to read The Open City first, but it appears to be a crime thriller set in Glasgow, and I just can’t seem to drum up the enthusiasm to read it.

Because it truly would be an undertaking – both it and Kingpin are quite long, the latter coming in at 236 pages of small, dense print. Interestingly, we get double quotation marks for the dialog instead of the standard single quotation marks used in England, but otherwise Miller’s prose is very English at times, more focused on probing the psyches of his characters than delivering the unbridled sleaze of an American trash fiction writer. That’s not to say Kingpin isn’t sleazy at times – it’s pretty explicit for a British novel – but it is pretty slow-going and tells a lot more than it shows. But it does occasionally get down and dirty, most often when relating the frequent sexual experiences of the titular “kingpin,” a right bastard of a DJ named Dave Cole.

While Kingpin is ostensibly a sequel to The Open City, returning protagonist Michael McBain is at most a supporting character. The first quarter of the novel wraps up unfinished business from the previous book; Michael runs a sort of Playboy Magazine publishing empire in Glasgow, and it’s over a year after he exacted his revenge on some underworld boss who had Michael’s brother killed. But in the exacting of that vengeange Michael’s beautiful sister, Jean, was paralyzed, her spine or something sliced up by a straight razor – the same razor Michael then used to slash up the underworld boss, who is now a “raving madman” in some asylum.

Then Michael gets a call from an acquaintance in London, and ventures over to hear about this new project a consortium of entreprenneurs would like Michael to consider: they’re heading up a million-pound discotheque in the West End, and want Michael to handle the publicity, as well as the hiring of DJs and female staff. I had a tough time figuring out if the disco meant “disco” in the current accepted meaning of the term, ie the Saturday Night Fever-esque coke-fueled disco sleaze of the late ‘70s. However, the book was published in ’74, meaning it was presumably written in ’73 or so, and of course in that period a “disco” was something else – the term I believe wasn’t even used for clubs here in the US at the time – so we mostly have mentions of “pop” songs, rather than dance songs.

Not that any of this matters much, but personally I demand exactness when it comes to music in fiction – I want to know the names of the bands, the sound of their music. Unfortunately Miller can’t be bothered with these details. We learn that 25 year-old Dave Cole is mega-successful in the pop world; he’s a DJ (ie a performing DJ, not a radio DJ), but he’s so powerful he can make or break groups, and he’s done production work as well. We get to see him in action a few times, DJing a few gigs, and we’re often told the names and songs of the groups (all of them fictional), but not much else, other than Cole’s hyperbolic DJ chatter; ie, “Here’s a gut-groover from Mudflap,” and the like. Miller does come up with some colorful names; in the book we also get Drophead Daisy, Black Pigeon (with “Sad Soul Sister”), and Big Billy (an “underground progressive rock” group, with the track “Rubber Gloves”). Too bad this is all we get to know about any of them.

There’s a lot of plotting and counterplotting; Jean, Michael’s wheelchair-bound sister, is a bit of a bitch, and has refashioned herself Nietszche-like after what she went through in the previous book. She’s now determined to do anything possible to get her way; for example when she learns that her young live-in nurse/best friend Charlotte plans to get married and leave her, Jean pretends to nearly drown in the bathtub, leaving Jean so guilt-ridden that she calls off her plans and insists on staying with Jean. But Jean saves her most elaborate plotting for Michael, whom she blames for her current crippled condition; if he hadn’t ruffled some underworld feathers, she would still be able to walk. 

But Michael is oblivious to this, thus offers Jean the opportunity to head up the promotions for the new disco, which will be named Source Sounds. He feels that getting her out of Glasgow and into London will be good for her, not knowing that Jean relishes the idea of using the new business venture to wreck Michael’s life. Let me give you a bummer of a spoiler right now – we get intermittent details on what the disco will look like, how ultra-modern and ultra-fab it will be, but my friends believe it or not, the book ends before the disco even opens! So we must be content with this verbalized description, courtesy one of the backers when selling the idea to Michael: 

The book really picks up when Dave Cole enters the narrative. We meet him as he is DJing an event, being scoped out by a pretty young brunette with a “pseudo-Afro;” Cole for his part has long blonde hair that runs past his shoulders and is given to wearing outrageous “pop” fashions, like denim suits and such. Here we get a taste of Cole’s nut-jobbery; he considers taking the brunette home, but first she must be put in her place, with Cole letting her know without shadow of a doubt that he’s a god and she’s a mere mortal – to this end he calls her out to the assembled throngs, encouraging the men to ambush her and force her to join the dancing masses. Then during a set break he goes to a bar around the corner and takes umbrage when the bartender tells him to scram, because guys with long hair aren’t welcome. Instead of leaving Cole beats the shit out of the guy with his judo moves…and a few sentences after he’s delivered this savage beating, we’re told via the narrative that Cole is a “sensitive man!”

It’s all about control with Cole – and Miller does refer to him by his last name, whereas Michael McBain is “Michael.” This further lends the impression that Cole is more of an anti-hero, though really he comes off like an antogonist. He takes the brunette, Beverly, home, and proceeds to treat her like crap, but at least we get a glimpse of Cole’s ultra-modern pad. But he’s one of those “pop world figures” who claims not to like pop, and plays classical on his state-of-the-art stereo; Miller by the way doesn’t get as geeky as I’d like with the occasional hardware mentions. For example we’re told Cole runs two turntables when he DJs, and that Source Sounds will have top of the line gear, but it’s not enough to satisfy a vintage gearhead like myself.

Anyway this is what will be the first of a few somewhat-explicit sex scenes; Cole feels Beverly up and then insists she put on a corset. Then he flips her over, ties her up, and takes her from behind – all without any preamble or warning. “You’re a kinky bastard, aren’t you?” the girl asks…before casually revealing that she’s done this sort of thing before! Cole really is kinky…when he meets Jean McBain later he lusts over the idea of sex with a girl in a wheelchair, something he’s fantasized about – and something he achieves, scoring with Jean in equally-explicit fashion in the last quarter of the book.

Michael McBain might’ve been the main protagonist of the previous book (I assume), but as mentioned he’s reduced to supporting status this time; we learn he’s married, to a beautiful blonde actress named Phyllis Stanley, but the couple is separated. She too comes to London, following Michael, but soon becomes infatuated with Cole. At a party in which Source Sounds is announced, Michael sets Cole on Phyllis, hoping to keep her from causing a scene. Instead Cole takes her back to her place for some more rough sex (“I’m going to fuck your insides out,” he helpfully informs her), after which Phyllis develops what will become a sort of fatal attraction for Cole.

This is what takes up the brunt of the narrative, rather than the more-interesting stuff about Source Sounds. That, and Cole’s increasing psychosis. He gets in frequent fights, beating opponents to burger with little provocation. We also learn quite randomly that he’s into heroin – he claims early on that he has “a psychological addition to LSD,” but we never see him use it. Instead he bashes people up, in one instance maiming some victim for life, then goes home covered in blood and shoots up. Phyllis begins to suspect Cole is behind the savage beating she’s read about in the paper, and confronts Cole with it, but this subplot pans out with Phyllis herself overdosing on sleeping pills.

Unbelievably, Miller uses the “accidental overdose” gambit twice; the novel rushes to a climax with Jean’s revenge coming to fruition: she’s gotten Cole to fall in love with her and has convinced him to give up the DJ world and become a fulltime artist(!?), with her representing him. Thus Cole quits Source Sounds – this after he’s made life hell for Michael and the other financial backers, mostly at Jean’s urging – and Michael is made to look a fool in front of the board, and is asked to resign. Then Michael is contacted by the cops, as Phyllis left a note with her lawyer, one that was only to be opened if she died in mysterious circumstances. The note implicates Cole in the savage beating of that guy…and Michael heads over for a reckoning with the DJ (spoiler alert)…to find Cole dead of an accidental heroin overdose.

And with this Kingpin comes to a close; Jean has burned bridges with both Michael and Charlotte, assuming her plan of revenge was a success, but we learn in passing narrative that she’s returned to Glasgow in defeat. Charlotte heads off for Paris, where presumably she was headed before The Open City begain, and Michael…I don’t know, I guess plans to return to his “filthy magazine empire” in Glasgow. I’m not sure if Miller wrote any more novels about these characters, nor am I sure I’ll ever actually read The Open City.

Here's the lame cover for the original hardcover – about as half-assed a cover photo as I’ve ever seen: