The Iceman #5: Spinning Target

The Iceman #5: Spinning Target, by Joseph Nazel

October, 1974  Holloway House

I recently came across this fifth installment of The Iceman and thought I’d check it out, even though I haven’t been the greatest fan of the previous volumes I’ve read. But as it turns out, #4: Sunday Fix was the last volume I had, and this one follows right after, with even a cursory mention of that novel’s events, so I figured I had nothing to lose. All told Spinning Target is on par with the other three volumes I’ve read. 

Joseph Nazel again doles out a Blaxploitation yarn in what is for the most part a humdrum, meat-and-potatoes style, comparable in some ways to that of Ralph Hayes or Dan Streib. Particularly the latter, in that once again Nazel has made the curious decision to deliver a story featuring a protagonist who literally runs a whorehouse and “loves” all of his women – women who constantly tell him how much they want him – and Nazel delivers absolutely zero sex, similar to how Streib would also ignore all the explicit stuff in his series novels. The Iceman is almost PG, which is baffling. Compare to contemporary Blaxploitation paperback series Dark Angel, which was consistently raunchy; one wonders why Nazel even bothered with the entire “million-dollar cathouse in the Vegas desert” setup of the series. And yet, this is the domain of series hero Henry Highland West, often called “The Iceman,” but more often than not just referred to as “Ice.” 

That said, I do enjoy the “seventies sci-fi” vibe of the Oasis, Ice’s Vegas bordello, with its “electronic brain” Matilda that is run by one of the resident girls. This at times gives The Iceman more of a futuristic vibe than other ‘70s sci-fi series, and curiously an “electronic brain” also factored into another Blaxploitation paperback of the day, The Gravy Train Hit. In another sci-fi bit, we learn that Ice’s Cadillac is “hot,” in that he can activate a low-wattage electrical forcefield around it to zap any would-be carjackers. Interesting then that it was the books with black protagonists that had more of a high-tech basis…oh wait, sorry. That should be “Black,” with the capital “B,” which is how Nazel writes it throughout…while “white” is never capitalized. I’d make fun of this, but sadly this has essentially become standard practice among the propaganda peddlers who work for mainstream “news” outlets these days. And their explanation for why they do so is humorously racist. (Bonus points if you guessed – correctly – that the person who wrote that explanation isn’t even black.) 

But then, the “Black” stuff only adds to the charm of The Iceman, given the overall empowerment angle of the series and Holloway House publications in general. Nazel constantly reminds us of the hardscrabble roots of his black characters and the harsh world they had to survive to become who they now are. The opening in particular conveys this, as Ice and his usual entourage – jive-talking Christmas Tree, soul-sister Solema, and “Japanese” sisters Kim and Jan – head down the red carpet at a big Hollywood premiere for a big-deal “Black movie” that is supposed to be worlds beyond “the typical Black exploitation cinema” of the day. In other words Nazel is specifically calling out “Blaxploitation” movies, though not using that term (I believe the term came about in the ‘90s, didn’t it?), which I found humorous given that he wrote the novelization of the Blaxploitation flick Black Gestapo. And you’ve gotta think the dude at least hoped The Iceman would receive a film treatment, right? 

If a movie had been made out of it, though, one would hope Nazel wouldn’t be the one who wrote the screenplay. Simply put, Spinning Target is the work of a writer who is exhausted from the relentless pace of writing an action series. The book is a study in how to draw out scenes past the breaking point, particularly scenes where nothing happens. There are endless sequences where characters stand around and talk…and talk…and talk, then we’ll break away to another group of characters who are talking endlessly, and then we’ll cut back to the first group, who talk some more. I’m not even really exaggerating. Action is infrequent, and when it happens, it too is weighed down by a curiously-deflated tone, as if Nazel were going through the motions. And as for the naughty stuff? Absolutely zilch! Hell, the female characters are barely even described, let alone exploited. 

Ice’s blue-colored vehicles and gadgetry are downplayed as well; in truth, Spinning Target could just as easily be the novelization of a ‘70s TV show, and one filmed on the cheap, too. The biggest setpiece occurs in the opening, and is depicted on the cover: after the big Hollywood premiere, which stars Ice’s old childhood friend Gwen (who has since become a famous singer and now actress), Ice is lured away on false pretenses and a gang of thugs try to kill him with a bazooka. This setpiece though is more of an indication of the page-filling trickery Joseph Nazel will give us throughout: it goes on for like 40 pages, and most of that runtime is given over to the hapless thugs arguing with each other, as if they’re twenty years early for a Quentin Tarantino movie. Some of it is funny, though, but boy it goes on. 

And another thing we learn here is that Joseph Navel POV-hops like a mother. By which I mean, we’ll be in the perspective of one character, and in the next paragraph we’re suddenly in the perspective of another, with absolutely nothing to warn us. This makes for a bumpy read as the reader is constantly knocked out of the narrative due to confusion: I mean Ice will be obliviously driving his Caddy in one paragraph, then in the next we’re abruptly in the thoughts of one of the hit-men who is waiting to kill him, then suddenly we’re in the thoughts of Gwen (who isn’t even there), and then we’re back to Ice…it’s like that through the entire book, so be prepared for some confusion if you attempt to read Spinning Target. This sort of thing drives me nuts, but others might not care as much. 

Ice manages to turn the tables on the bazooka team, but from here on out it’s more of a looong-simmer mystery as Ice tries to figure out why Gwen is acting so weird. So basically Gwen grew up on the streets with Ice and Tree, but now she’s bigtime, only we readers know she’s hooked on heroin by her manager, Parsons – who himself is under the gun from his white Syndicate backers. Parsons is the one behind the opening hit on Ice, though really the job was forced on Parsons…and the dude doesn’t make for the most compelling villains. There’s a nigh-endless part midway through where Gwen tries to break away from him…and nearly kills the hulking guy, who is more than twice her size, beating the shit out of Parsons with an ash tray and other items. This scene though is another indication of how Nazel will take something and stretch it past the breaking point, with the two arguing, fighting…arguing some more, then fighting, then Gwen escaping…then stuff with her escaping with the kindly old black doctor (who despite being kindly has been secretly dosing her with junk per Parsons’s orders), and just on and on. 

What makes it frustrating is all the missed opportunities. For one, Gwen. We’re told she became a famous singer and has done albums and all this, but she spends the entire novel running from Parsons and hoping for her latest heroin fix. There’s zero studio stuff and no spotlight for her to do anything. Same goes for Parsons, a mogul who runs an upstart music label with backing from the mob. Instead he spends the novel raging at Gwen, getting beaten up by her, and then hiring various thugs to go get her – thugs he usually spends pages and pages arguing with. About the most interesting thing we get is a brief visit Ice pays to a Los Angeles “jazz DJ” (who nonetheless plays songs by Gwen, which aren’t described as being “jazz;” but then they aren’t described at all) who gives Ice the scoop on pirating and bootlegging albums. Even this doesn’t pander out, however. 

Ice doesn’t do much ass-kicking, either. He blows away the bazooka goons in the opening, then spends the rest of the novel trying to figure out what’s going on with Gwen. Tree, Solema, Kim, and Jan are usually his entourage, but only Tree stands out, mostly due to his affrontery over how Gwen failed to notice him at the Hollywood premiere. Ice does not “make use” of any of the girls, though we’re often reminded that he loves all of them…and plans to give them the goods eventually! It’s all very curious. The girls get in on the other variety of action, though; late in the game they all get out their nickel-plated revolvers and hit the streets of L.A. as they try to help Ice. Nazel has toned the violence way down from the first volume, with gore nonexistent; more detail is placed on Ice’s “nunchaku,” illegal in Californa as Nazel informs us; Ice carries the pair around in his powder-blue suit and bashes in a couple of heads with them. 

The finale is somewhat memorable, with all the characters converging on the Hollywood sign. Here Ice, armed only with his .38, takes on a group of black thugs led by “Big Man,” who is another character that does a helluva lot of talking with not much in the way of action. Big Man however takes up a lot of the novel, bossing around Parsons. Nazel has so much fun with all the “goon chatter” that he can’t help himself; even during a climactic raid on Parson’s warehouse, Nazel briefly features a trio of goons – named, seriously, Rastus, Rufus, and Remus – and gives them a couple pages of banter before Ice shows up with his .38. 

There were a few more volumes after this, and I’d be curious to find out someday if Gwen becomes a recurring character in the series; the end of the novel occurs a few months later, and we’re told that Gwen has not only kicked horse but has also won the Oscar. And also, she’s become part of Ice’s retinue, signing a contract to perform at the Oasis. This could mean that Gwen might become one of the faceless, nondescript female characters who populate The Iceman, but as of now Spinning Target is the latest volume of the series I have, so I have no way of confirming.

Port Wine Stain

Port Wine Stain, by Jerry Oster

August, 1980  Signet Books

Jerry Oster is a prolific crime writer whose work I have only recently discovered; it appears he has reprinted most of his novels as eBooks. Port Wine Stain, a Signet Books paperback original, was his first novel, and it appears to be relatively unknown. It’s never been reprinted and isn’t available as an eBook, possibly indicating that Oster would prefer it to remain unknown. 

But man, once again kudos to the Signet copywriter(s) who handled these early ‘80s crime PBOs. As with Phone Call and The Ripper, the back cover copy goes out of its way to imply that Port Wine Stain is naughtiness of the first order, filled with willing women and graphic sex. Heck, the book’s even sluglined “A thriller for the adult ‘80s” on the back cover, and the copy lends the impression that it’s about a guy with “too many women in his life” who falls in love with an actres he sees in a porno flick. All of which is sort of what happens in Port Wine Stain, with the additional note that there is zero in the way of explicit sex in the novel, and even the exploitation of the female characters is nonexistent. Once again I am impressed with the copywriters of these ‘70s and ‘80s paperback houses and their ability to make any book come off like a sleazefest. They’d probably describe Gone With The Wind as “An untamed woman’s sexual odyssey in the passionate, lust-fueled world of the Antebellum South!” 

Rather, Port Wine Stain is a darkly humorous crime thriller with hardboiled tones, mostly due to the witty rapport Jerry Oster skillfully gives his characters. Indeed the final quarter of the novel seems to be a Thin Man riff, with narrator Charles Ives trading witty banter with his lovely female acquaintance as they try to solve a murder mystery. Dialog appears to be Oster’s strong suit, judging from this novel, with a lot of memorable exchanges between Ives and the people he encounters…most of whom do happen to be women, but again the kinky and naughty stuff is more a product of the Signet copywriter’s imagination. 

Charles Ives is somewhere in his 40s, a newspaper reporter in Manhattan, and he covered the war in Saigon before being pulled from the job because his editor said readers weren’t interested in stuff about far-off places. This Vietnam stuff still serves as a thorn in Ives’s side, and given that he still works for the same editor there’s occasional bantering about it between the two. But here’s the curious stuff. We know the war has ended, as Ives at one point mentions it…but I almost get the impression that Port Wine Stain occurs in the past – meaning, not in ‘80s. If so, then the “thriller for the adult ‘80s” tag on the back cover is also misleading. I say this given that Ives often begins his sentences with “In those days,” or “Something I remember even unto today,” as he recounts to us the story that is Port Wine Stain, clearly giving the impression that our narrator is telling us of events that happened long ago. Or maybe this is a novelistic conceit and the story does occur in 1980, but narrator Ives is writing in some distant future (let’s say 1994 and he’s a big NIN fan!) 

Jerry Oster went on to focus on crime and mystery thrillers, and Port Wine Stain is no different. Ives when we meet him is working night shift and his editor gives him a job to look into a recent murder “downtown.” Ultimately Ives will become entangled with the widow of the man who was killed, a lovely young woman who sports a nevus flammeus mark on her right cheek – the “port wine stain” of the title, as it’s a crimson mark that looks as if the lady has spilled wine on her cheek. Ives will become infatuated with this woman, Pamela Yost, to the extent that he is constantly putting off the advances of his latest casual bedmate, a teacher named Kate. And also to the extent that he’s putting off the advances of the new girl on the paper, a pretty young thing named Ann Roth. 

Yes, Charles Ives spends the entire first quarter of the novel turning down offers of sex, which must have given those Signet editors apoplexy. So much for that “liberated sex” promised on the cover! Kate in particular hounds Ives, at one point even trying her damnest to convince him to invite her up to his apartment for the night. But our narrator is unmoved; he’s too smitten with the “idea” of Pamela Yost, a woman he has only briefly met. But he felt a spark and now is obsessed with her, the fantasy of her that exists in his mind. And this is weird, too, ‘cause when Ives meets Pamela her husband has literally just been killed and he’s feeling the “sparking” between the two of them as they exchange glances and Ives sees that port wine stain and just wants to run his hand over it. This is like an hour or two after Mr. Yost has been shot to death by someone who broke into the Yost’s apartment. 

This obviously makes our narrator seem a bit “sus,” as the kids of today might say, but what’s even more curious is that the other characters don’t make too big a deal out of the fact that he’s smitten with a fresh widow. That is Pamela Yost on the cover, by the way; the uncredited cover artist got fairly good direction, as she is described as lovely and patrician, and the next time Ives sees her is at her husband’s funeral, where she’s dressed in black mourning clothes, as also depicted on the cover. But it appears the artist missed the “port wine stain” bit, unless you really stare at the picture…I mean the cheek is kind of crimson, but it also looks like makeup. There is no mistaking Pamela’s port wine stain for makeup in the novel, and in fact, she unsuccessfully tries to cover it up with makeup in the porno flick she appears in, so as to disguise herself. 

Ives learns of this “adult movie” (which would appear to be a relatively new term, given how Ives is unfamiliar with it) from Ann Roth, the “new girl” on the paper (in a sign of the changing times, Ives informs us that newspapers are “a man’s world” which made me laugh out loud when thinking of the papers of today), as Ann has been given the story of Mr. Yost’s murder. Even though it began as Ives’s story, his wily editor has changed course and given it to Ann (it’s revealed in an unexplored subplot that he’s been courting her, but hasn’t made the sale – meaning even other guys aren’t getting laid in this novel). It’s Ann who discovers that Pamela Yost features in a new porno flick that happens to be playing in the city. This she reveals to Ives by taking him to the movie, and Ives’s realization that the pretty woman with the heavy makeup engaging in onscreen sex is indeed Pamela is so blasé that Ives comes off like a robot. But then, he reacts with a similar blasé attitude to major deaths in the course of the novel. 

This I felt was the biggest failing of Port Wine Stain. Jerry Oster wants his cake and to eat it, too, to borrow a lame cliché. He wants the novel to be acerbic and arch-hardboiled, yet at the same time he strives for an “emotional connection” with Ives slowly coming to terms with the fact that he’s in love with a “fantasy.” This makes for a very self-absorbed narrator/protagonist. To his credit, though, Ives does manage to bed three women in the short, 216-page course of the novel, though as mentioned it is all entirely off-page. Even the “adult film” Pamela stars in is so vaguely described that I had a hard time understanding it even was an adult film, as Ives gives zero details about the movie, or what – or perhaps that should be who – Pamela does in it. But the fact that he beds both Pamela and Ann is almost a passing thought, particularly given the developments of the plot – it makes Ives come off like quite a cad, as he seems quite unconcerned over what has happened to both women. 

Rather, it’s Kate, the schoolteacher who realizes she wants kids, who factors the most in the final quarter of Port Wine Stain, and for those keeping score, Ives, uh, scores with her, too. She is the Myrna Loy to Ives’s William Powell in the Thin Man-esque vibe of these final pages, as the two banter while solving a murder mystery. I should mention that a lot of the dialog is about novels and literary works and characters in novels; in some way the dialog throughout almost reminds me of early Don DeLillo, in how the characters are so insular, talking avidly about subjects the author is clearly interested in. Speaking of “interesting,” there’s a nice bit where Ives and Kate discuss how The Magus has recently received a revised edition, and Ives sniffs that he thinks it’s a bad idea, because “authors should only get one shot.” Perhaps this explains why Port Wine Stain has never been reprinted. 

Because honestly, the finale of the novel is a hot mess, and no doubt it would benefit from some revising. Basically the novel ends, with Ives uncovering who was behind the murder and why it happened – a very hardboiled bit of Ives strapped to a chair and bullshitting his way out of it while trading witty rapport with the bad guy – and then Port Wine Stain goes into freefall for several pages. Because…for some reason, we are treated to a letter Kate has written Ives after leaving him, with her thoughts on their relationship and where she’s going on her trip, and all this stuff that makes the reader scratch his head, because he thought he was reading a mystery-thriller, not a rom-com. 

Overall Port Wine Stain is mostly a success in its witty dialog, some of which made me chuckle. I also enjoyed the topical details, like Ives and Pamela having lunch at Windows On The World, in the World Trade Center, and also there was a super-random Neil Young reference; Ives tells us a jukebox is playing a song with the lines “Love is a rose/but you better not pick it,” and that’s a Neil Young song – actually Linda Ronstadt had the hit with it, and that’s probably the version Ives is hearing on the jukebox, but Young wrote it and recorded it first, even though he released it after Ronstadt. Well, I sort of lost the thread here, so I should wrap it up now.