The Deadly Deep

The Deadly Deep, by Jon Messmann

May, 1976  Signet Books

Like Marc Olden, Jon Messmann is another Signet Books author who moved into more “upmarket” fiction once the men’s adventure genre dried out in the mid-‘70s. After The Revenger and the Pyramid Books-published Handyman came to a close, Messmann began publishing one-off mystery and horror novels, this being one of the first of them. The cover blurb, with its reference to “jaws,” rather unsubtly lets you know which particular blockbuster horror novel inspired The Deadly Deep. 

At 222 pages of small, dense print, the novel is very much in-line with Messmann’s men’s adventure publications, with that same literary vibe where ten words do the job of two. The Deadly Deep is also gloriously, unapologetically “1970s” in its vibe: sex is a prime motivator of practically every situation and all women are referred to as “girls,” their breasts described ad naseum. All this of course is much to the chagrin of the perennially-aggrieved wokesters on Goodreads and Amazon, but it goes without saying that I personally dug it; a refreshing reminder of when books were written – and published – with a male readership in mind. Indeed, the novel’s opening sentence concerns a hotstuff “mistress” suntanning on the deck of a fishing boat deep in the ocean, about to take off her bikini top for the viewing pleasure of the first mate. 

Per the horror novel template, The Deadly Deep begins with a few one-off characters meeting their grisly fates. In short, marine life has run amok and begun attacking humans. The opening sequence, with the babe on the fishing boat, takes place in July 1975 (the rest of the novel spanning the ensuing months), and the “girl” (whose name is Candy!) is the mistress of a professional deep sea fisherman(!). As she suntans on deck, a big blue whale comes out of the Pacific and closes in on the boat, capsizing it. Only Candy survives, clinging to a shard of debris; “She was a survivor, and, as such, she would survive.” (That’s downright Biblical!) Her story is not believed by the authorities, but when a few weeks later a crab fisherman is similarly killed by crazed crabs it would seem that something rotten’s going on in nature. 

This brings us to the hero of the tale, studly ‘70s dude Aran Holder, a freelance science writer. (I assume his name is pronounced “Aaron.”) Again Messmann caters to the ‘70s demand for ruggedly virile protagonists; even though Aran is introduced while merely lying asleep in bed with his girlfriend, Jenny, we’re informed posthaste that the two recently did the deed: “[Jenny’s] moaning screams of ecstasy still seemed to echo in the silence of the cottage.” Curiously though Messmann isn’t as forthcoming with the sleazy details, until later in the novel when he almost randomly delivers a fairly graphic encounter between the two. And as ever it’s very much on the Burt Hirschfeld tip, with that same pseudo-literary vibe when the hanky panky goes down, a la “He moved his tongue through the deep soft-wire mossy triangle.” Talk about the deadly deep! Or my favorite, when Aran gets lucky with another swingin’ chick later in the novel: “She was sensuality…the Circean cup made flesh.” I mean that one’s almost straight out of the Loeb Classical Library. 

The major problem I see with The Deadly Deep – other than the inordinate narrative flab, that is – is Aran Holder himself. For some reason Messmann has chosen to give us a hero who is a freelance science writer, one who occasionally teaches on the side. And this is a tale about sea life going crazy and killing humans. What it needs is a more action-prone hero, like a grizzled ‘Nam SEAL vet or something, or like the dude out of the Sea Quest TV show. Someone who’d be out on the sea battling this threat. In other words, the type of hero you’d encounter if this story had been told a dozen years before in the average men's adventure magazine. But at this point in his career Messmann as mentioned is aiming for a more upscale market, thus his hero is more of a thinker than a doer, and in fact Aran’s major contribution is that he knows people, mostly via features he’s written. 

Otherwise the brunt of the “sea action” is handled by one-off characters who, in many cases, take up a lot more narrative space than necessary. Again, I know it’s part of the horror novel template, but still it bugs me to read several pages of backstory and setup on a character who’s about to meet a grisly fate. Messmann does this throughout, cutting across the globe and introducing sundry characters who make the fatal discovery that the denizens of the deep have now become supremely pissed off at human beings. Messmann gets pretty inventive with the various scenes, with all manner of aquatic attacks: giant squid, killer whales, pirhanas, and even your common everyday cod and other coastal fish. Surprisingly the one marine lifeform he doesn’t much exploit is sharks, probably because he didn’t want to be too on the nose so far as what particular blockbuster inspired this one. 

We see our first couple attacks in July of ’75, from the killer whale to a bunch of crabs eating some guy. Aran hears about this on the radio, vacationing in a seaside cottage in Maryland, and is further pulled into the mystery when his girlfriend, Jenny, is bitten by fish while the two are swimming. (Of course she happens to be topless at the time.) As mentioned Aran’s “skillset” is mainly that he knows people, so he puts in a call to the Fish and Wildlife Service and is eventually put in contact with East Coast boss Emerson Boardman, who works out of Boston. Aran knows Emerson from previous work, so the two already have a rapport. Emerson invites Aran to Boston to help serve as a sort of public relations guy, the setup being that Aran has experience with breaking down highfalutin “science” concepts so that even slackjawed yokels can comprehend them. 

This brings us into what The Deadly Deep will mostly be comprised of: Aran attending a ton of meetings. Meetings with other men, it should go without saying, with no females present other than secretaries, but I don’t want to elaborate too much else they come after Messmann once they’re done cancelling Dr. Seuss. But man, it does sort of go on and on, in particular Aran’s run-ins with a “let’s kill ‘em all” Admiral. Meanwhile Emerson (unfortunately there’s no mention of Lake or Palmer) proves himself incompetent; another horror novel template is the humorously-unecessary death scene, and this duly occurs when Emerson tells his secretary/mistress that it’s safe to go swimming with her girlfriends. When meanwhile there have been fatal fish attacks all over the coasts. This part is particularly unsettling given that the fish rip the girl’s breast off as they attack – I guess the dark side of the whole breast objectification thing. 

Meanwhile Aran shuttles back and forth from Boston to the cottage retreat along the Maryland coast. He again is brought into the dangerous situation in an eerie scene in which a “phalanx” of crabs set upon the area one night. Here too Messmann’s able to work in the ‘70s obsession with sleaze and sex, with the first victims being a married couple who enjoy getting sloshed and having sex on the beach (the literal thing, not the drink). This part also shows a sadly-unexploited hint of dark comedy when the poor woman’s last thought is that she ate crab for dinner! Otherwise Messmann plays it pretty straight throughout; sometimes, as is his wont, a little too straight, with his usual penchant for characters who will spout philosophical quips that would have Descartes stroking his goattee in thought. 

Emerson turns more and more to booze as the situation becomes untenable – the sea has become hazardous to any craft, and given the attack of sea life even the beef industry has to introduce limitations on product – and Aran takes over his role. This of course means more meetings for the reader to endure. There’s a definite focus on eco-concerns, again par for the course in ‘70s sci-fi, with some go-nowhere stuff from a marine biologist that all this might be due to chemical changes in the layers of water that make up the ocean. What initially comes up as yet another red herring turns out to be the prime mover of the narrative: Aran learns that one of his past studies, a “marine life communication” researcher named Evan Taylor, has just committed suicide down at his lab in the Florida Keys. 

Aran keeps wondering why Taylor would do this now of all times. When he goes down to the Keys to investigate he finds, you guessed it, a drunked-up hotstuff babe with “heavy breasts” and an otherwise brick shithouse bod (which is lovingly objectified for us) just waiting all on her horny lonesome for him. Her name is Kay Elliot (which we’re reminded of practically every time she’s mentioned or spoken to – as ever, Messmann has this strange quirk of always referring to minor characters by their full names) and yep, within like a few sentences she’s already propositioning Aran: “Let’s screw all afternoon.” She was Evan Taylor’s assistant (his full name is constantly given, as well) and clearly she’s gone to drink as a sort of security blanket. Aran fends off her amorous advances (he won’t later, though) and heads back to Boston…only to come right back on down when he suddenly remembers that Taylor was researching genetic engineering. All this is curiously modern sounding, with talk about human DNA being implanted in some killer whales and Taylor and colleagues raising the three calves. 

All this Aran finally learns from a sobered-up Kay. It gets kind of goofy here as it turns out that the baby killer whales learned to “talk” to the researchers via a series of panels in their tank, which was channelled off from the ocean. So basically one day, about a year after the implants and etc, the three orcas just didn’t show up anymore…and a few weeks later was the first sealife attack, ie the whale attack that opened the book. It gets super-‘70s quasi-mystical here with talk about Jung of all things, I mean the last thing you’d expect to read…but Messmann’s philosophy-prone characters speculate that “the awakened phylogenetic consciousness of an entire species” (!!) has turned non-killers into killers, as has happened with sea life across the globe. 

But hey, let’s get busy! That’s pretty much the idea that night as Kay, as expected, slinks naked into “the spare room down the hall” where Aran is spending the night. Messmann delivers another of his patented pseudo-literary “what exactly is even happening?” sex scenes, as the two find “respite” in one another. Because meanwhile the world’s gone to hell, Messmann delivering a suitably apocalyptic scenario that only gets worse and worse as the novel progresses. The gung-ho Admiral continues to botch things up, which only leads to more reprisals from the amassed sea creatures, including even a tsunami they manage to create. There’s also “guerrilla warfare” via fish that cling beneath the coastal crusts and venture out to attack oblivious swimmers…people still so obstinate that they’re willing to go to the beach. 

As mentioned though the goofiness really comes to the fore toward the end, to the point that it’s hard to take any of it seriously. So presumably the three DNA-impacted orcas have started this underwater rebellion, the fish deciding to kill mankind. The three orcas occasionally come back to their research pool, so as to taunt their former captors; the reason Kay’s still been down here. Aran gradually learns what really happened to Evan Taylor; the orcas would come to taunt him via those stupid panels, and he went out there on a boat with a gun one day…only to find out the orcas weren’t messing around. Aran’s plan is for Kay to call him as soon as the orcas show up again, and he’ll get a special Navy transport to whisk him down to the Keys to try to reason with the whales. So you see even here, Kay, the original researcher on the project, isn’t even given the opportunity to reason with them! Nor is the opportunity even presented to her. 

But the stupid Admiral strikes again…actually his plan isn’t that dumb. When Kay calls that the orcas have shown up, the Admiral doesn’t send a transport for Aran…but instead sends a couple fighter jets to take the “terrorist leaders” out! However this too fails, ultimately leading to a nicely-done scene in which Aran does indeed have a “talk” with the orcas. He goes out on a boat and carries out a discussion with them on those panels, and here the whales too are even philosophers, turning Aran’s arguments around on him. A nicely-done scene, but also increasingly ridiculous…especially when Aran displays heretofore-unknown badass skills when he sets his boat on fire and jumps out into the sea to swim away from the shocked killer whales. 

At 222 pages of super-small print, you’d think The Deadly Deep would tell a full tale with a satisfactory conclusion, but unbelievably enough the finale’s as ridiculous as the entire premise. SPOILER ALERT so skp to the next paragraph if you don’t want to know. Well, things have gone from dire to worse, with the entire world in the balance due to the sea attacks; the military has no choice but to nuke various areas so that the entire geography will be redesigned. There are end of the world cults, panic in society, etc. And then, virtually overnight, the attacks just stop. This then plays out with an overdone part where two kids go out fishing one day and don’t have any trouble. Soon enough it is apparent that sea life has gone back to normal. Aran opines that the genetic engineering “expired” and everything’s okay now…but really all this was a “warning” that man should respect other creatures. As if chortling to himself over how ridiculous this is, Messmann ends the tale with a couple yokels excitedly getting into their fishing boats, almost slobbering at the thought of all the fish they’ll catch! 

With a couple Biblical quotes here and there, Messmann clearly tries to convey a “serious” vibe, but really The Deadly Deep is pretty goofy…which by the way isn’t a criticism. If I’m going to read something like this I want it to go over the top. But as mentioned Messmann’s dogged insistence on stretching things out and making them overly “serious” tends to kill the fun. Oh and the uncredited cover art, while cool, turns out to be misleading – unfortunately there is no weird underwater babe who is behind all the attacks. After The Deadly Deep Messmann turned out a few mysteries, then some Westerns under a house name or two. The book features a bio of him, which I thought was pretty cool, if only because this might be the most we ever know about the guy: