Dirty Harry

Dirty Harry, by Phillip Rock

No month stated, 1977  Star Books

(Original US edition 1971)

Phillip Rock, who wrote the awesome Hickey & Boggs novelization, handles the tie-in for the first Dirty Harry flick, and it’s another good book. It doesn’t come off like an entirely new story, like his novelization of Hickey And Boggs did (likely because Rock was working from Walter Hill’s original screenplay for that one). Instead, Rock’s Dirty Harry is pretty much the prototypical film novelization, serving up mostly the same story as the film but with minor variations. 

This slim UK paperback seems to be a direct lift of the text that was originally published by Berkley Books in the US in 1971. There are US-style double quotation marks instead of UK-style single quotation marks, and there doesn’t appear to have been any tinkering by Star Books. Initially I wondered if the f-bombs had been removed, as sometimes we’re informed that Dirty Harry might utter a “short, harsh, four-letter word,” and I suspected skittish British editors might have bowdlerized Rock’s original text (because they don’t use the f-word over there in England, btw). But then later in the book the word “fuck” appears, so there went my suspicions. The strangest thing though is why Dirty Harry was even reprinted in the UK in 1977. This was a year after The Enforcer was released, which was the last Dirty Harry movie until 1983’s Sudden Impact. 

It's been 7 or 8 years since I last watched Dirty Harry, but overall the difference I noted between the film and Rock’s novel is that, mainly, there is more characterization of the villain, Scorpio, in the novel. Here we see how much of a whackjob he truly is; he has forgotten his real name and spends most of the time looking up at the sky, wondering where the stars are. He’s very much into the astrology scene, and Rock puts the occasional horroscope for Scorpio in the book. There is more of an attempt by Rock to make Scorpio a rounded figure than there is in the film itsef, and the same holds true for Rock’s take on Dirty Harry. In the novel it seemed to me that Harry – whose full name, we’re informed, is Harry Francis Kallahan – is a bit more of a team player, and a lot of the book is comprised of him doing standard police detecting instead of making quips and busting heads. 

We’re also informed that Harry has been a cop for nineteen years and that he’s from San Francisco; he grew up in the apparently-rough Potrero Hill neighborhood of the city. I don’t know anything about San Francisco, but Philip Rock certainly seems to, as Dirty Harry is peppered with topical details about the city, to the extent that you assume Rock must have had more than a passing familiarity with the place. It’s one thing for the film to show famous locales, but another for Rock to tell us precisely where things are taking place; he even shows familiarity with San Francisco’s public transit system, down to the exact stops. Given this, I felt more of an awareness of San Francisco in the novel than I did in the film itself. I also thought it was interesting that Rock so tied the locale into the setting, given that the Dirty Harry men’s adventure novels, part of Warner Books’ “Men Of Action” line in the early ‘80s, often took Harry outside of his city. 

As mentioned Rock follows the film pretty faithfully, so I assume he must’ve gotten to view a workprint or a final draft; if I’m not mistaken, Dirty Harry was in development hell for a long time, with such actors as John Wayne supposedly at one point slated to star in it. The book even opens the same as the movie, with Scorpio up on a roof and sniping a beautiful young woman as she swims in a hotel pool. But as ever with tie-ins, we are brought more into the minds of the characters, from the insane thoughts that propel Scorpio to the thoughts of the girl in the pool – who’s here, we learn, because she’s having an affair with some lawyer she plans to marry. We also learn that her “last thought on Earth” concerns “what her breasts looked like as she drifted across the pool.” (It’s nice to know that even girls think about boobs all the time!) 

The setup here also shows how Harry comes into the fold; he simply answers the phone in the inspector’s room at his precinct because the other inspectors are busy. Whereas the film had that great time-lapse bit with the murder followed by the investigation, here it’s a bit more drawn out with Harry getting the call and heading over to the hotel. One thing to note is that Rock makes Harry a bit cheaper than in the film; indeed, we’re told he’s “a tall man, but whip-thin” and that he looks like “an overworked cop in a cheap suit.” You almost get the impression Harry's “whip-thin” because he doesn’t have the money to eat; we’re also informed that, when Harry bums a cigar from a fellow cop, he carefully pinches it out and puts it in his pocket to smoke later. 

But as mentioned, Harry comes off more as a “realistic” cop here in the novel than the one-man army he was in the film. That said, the famous opening with the bank robbery is here in the book. Same setup too, with Harry enjoying a hot dog and noticing how no one seems to be coming out of the bank across the street, even though people keep going in. The ensuing gunfight even plays out the same…save for Harry’s famous line. Here, when he holds his .44 Magnum on the lone surviving bank robber, Harry does ask whether he fired five times or six, but we get the added detail that “regulations” say he should only have five bullets…and the question is whether he’s gone against regulations and put a sixth bullet in the chamber. The film made a very wise decision in cutting out this detail; it sounds a lot more badass to just leave it as “how many times did I shoot?” Another change – instead of the more powerful “it’ll blow your head clean off” of the film, here in the novel Harry says his .44 Magnum will “turn your head into hash.” 

I should watch the movie again, because it’s the middle portion of Rock’s Dirty Harry that seemed different to me. First of all Harry’s given a new partner, whether he wants one or not: new inspector Chico Gonsales. The two begin canvassing leads, and here in the novel there’s much more of a procedural vibe than I recall the film having. Here again Rock brings San Francisco to life, with Harry and Chico driving around various neighborhoods and asking about any suspicious characters. And also here Scorpio is certainly given more inner depth than he was in the film, with periodic bits where he’ll wander around the city, often trying to hit on women who ignore him, or looking up at the sky and wishing for a place where he can view the stars. But still even here I didn’t feel that his astrological gimmick was fully worked into the plot; I mean the movie has it that he’s a psycho, which is obvious, but Rock tries to integrate the horoscope stuff into it – all of it no doubt inspired by the Zodiac Killer. 

Harry runs the case and a lot of the plot hinges around him bucking the stupid higher ups who want to string Zodiac along…in particular “The Mayor,” as memorably portrayed by John Vernon in the film. One of Harry’s biggest ideas is to lure Scorpio to the one building not guarded by the cops, Harry correctly guessing that Scorpio’s arrogance will prevent him from realizing it’s a trap. Harry, armed with an “elephant gun,” gets in a shootout with the serial killer, but Scorpio manages to escape, and a cop dies in the melee. But this will be it on the action front for a good while; instead it’s back to Harry and Chico canvassing the city and looking for leads. There’s also no sleazy action for Harry, though we learn in a minor aside that his wife was killed in a car accident, though they hadn’t been married long and “it was a long time ago.” 

The action returns in the final quarter. First, there’s the famous sequence where Scorpio makes “bag man” Harry run around San Francisco from payphone to payphone. Rock really brings home how much misery it would cause to run around with a suitcase filled with $250,000 in small bills; Harry only belatedly realizes he should’ve gotten a backpack. This leads to yet another shootout, and Harry employing a switchblade – something he’d insisted on bringing along, despite the reservations of the Chief of Police. And, same as in the film, Scorpio’s cleared because Harry has trampled his rights in the gathering of the incriminating evidence…yet it’s kind of hard to believe that a guy who has been a cop for 19 years wouldn’t have thought of any of that. 

Rock also captures the ravaged horror of Scorpio’s face after he pays a boxer to beat him up…so the “assault” can be blamed on Harry, who has been following Scorpio around. But this subplot doesn’t go anywhere. Rather, same as the film it all climaxes in Scorpio taking hostage a school bus. This sequence in the film, by the way, features what I consider the highlight of Lalo Schifrin’s score…the “Scorpio Theme” played on a very mean fuzz bass. Even here it all plays out mostly the same as the film…with one minor but important difference. Proving out that the producers couldn’t decide which way the finale would go, Harry here in the novel does not throw his badge into a lake, though he briefly considers it. It’s my understanding that Clint Eastwood is the one who pushed for the “badge toss” finale. I always thought Magnum Force should’ve opened with Harry scuba-diving in search of his badge. 

Speaking of Magnum Force, that has always been my favorite of the Dirty Harry movies. I know this first one gets all the acclaim, but the second one just does more for me. However Philip Rock didn’t write the novelization for it; this was the only Dirty Harry novelization he wrote. And he does a fine job, bringing the characters and their inner turmoils to life. So again I say Dirty Harry is pretty much the template for a movie tie-in, as there are no glaring differences from the actual film, and mostly it just gives a more complete look at the characters themselves.