Wetbones

Wetbones, by John Shirley
June, 1999 Leisure Books
(Original publication, 1993)

I think I can see now why John Shirley has apparently disowned his Specialist men's adventure series -- it gives little indication of the man's true writing talent. Wetbones was published about 9 years after that series and it suffers from none of the slow pace or inordinate padding. It's a straight-up horror novel, however, very much in a "Lovecraft for the '90s" sort of vein, so it might not be to everyone's taste. And also it's overly gory, something all of the critics were sure to mention, but I didn't find it too outrageous -- but then, having read David Alexander's magnum opus Phoenix, I'm pretty much desensitized to violence in fiction.

In many ways this novel is almost like a horror take on trash fiction. It's set in Hollywood, involves movie biz characters, and even refers back to past periods of Tinseltown excess with sequences that could have come out of Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon -- in fact Shirley even mentions that book a few times. And in a way Wetbones is sort of grisly satire of Hollywood itself, of how people will do anything to become someone, and how those who are someone will do anything to take advantage of them.

Shirley juggles a fairly large cast, and he does so with such flair that you easily keep track of everyone. He also does not POV-hop a single time, which is always a cause to celebrate with the adding of chocolate to milk. Two "main" characters emerge: Tom Prentice, a struggling screenwriter looking for his big break, and Garner, a former drug addict who is now a reverend, counseling addicts and kids on the street. Prentice and Garner have their own plots throughout the novel, ones that gradually weave together until they meet at the very end. For though they don't know it, Garner and Prentice are united by the central threat here: the Akishra, nebulous, worm-like entitites from the astral realm that feed on the pleasure centers of the human brain.

Prentice has just identified the emaciated and mutilated body of his ex-wife, Amy. She plays heavily in his thoughts as he goes about the business of trying to get money for a script, all while hanging out and driking with his friend Jeff, a successful action screenwriter who I'm betting is based on Shane Black. Garner meanwhile has more immediate problems: his teenaged daughter Constance has gone missing. Garner knows she has been kidnapped and so goes on a quest for her, intuiting that she was most likely taken up to LA. We the readers know that Constance is going through much, much worse than the lurid, horrifying things Garner imagines she must be going through.

For Constance has been kidnapped by Ephram Pixie, surely one of the most despicable characters ever to grace a novel. Ephram has complete control of Constance's mind, using her as a puppet. He gets off on having her pick up strangers and then taking them back to their hotel while she has sex with him (or her), all the while Ephram watching, until finally Ephram forces -- through his mind -- Constance to murder the person. So this leads to all sorts of lurid stuff as Constance will be astride some guy, slicing him apart, hating herself for it but unable to control herself. And indeed getting of on it. Constance's story might be the most twisted one in Wetbones, as she realizes she must become like Ephram to survive.

Prentice and Jeff meanwhile go off searching for Jeff's missing younger brother, Mitch -- who happens to have been the last person Prentice's ex wife was seen with. And just as with Constance, Mitch's reality is far worse than anyone could imagine. He's trapped in the Doublekey Ranch outside Hollywood, the rolling mansion of a once-famous husband and wife. These people are even more twisted than Ephram; the house is an endless horror in which kidnapped victims go through endless misery for the satisfaction of the owners. Like Ephram these people control the mind; like Ephram they are "pleasure vampires," vassals of the Akishira, who, to retain their own pleasure centers (which we are told eventually burn out), put victims through endless torment to gain satisfaction via proxy. Any sort of satisfaction -- and since pleasure has finite potential but pain is limitless, they mostly put their victims through gruesome hell.

The Doublekey Ranch material is not for the squeamish. Shirley packs in the gory detail, particularly toward the end, where we have such Clive Barker-esque material as a bedsheet which has been made out of the skin of one of the victims, complete with the hollowed face gaping up from the center. All of it capped off with the girl who is being raped on the bed looking down and seeing that the face in the bedsheet is her brother's. I mean, it's all pretty outrageous and definitely leaves an impression on the reader.

Prentice and Garner go through their own personal hells through the novel, Garner in particular. In his trawl through the underbelly of LA he falls back into his addiction, and here Shirley fully brings to life the nihilistic world of the addict. Wetbones should be required reading in rehab clinics; after reading it you will never look at addiction the same way again. Long story short, the Akishra feed off of the sick, self-destructing pleasures of addiction, and after latching into an addict they push him or her on and on until they at last kill themselves.

It isn't all horror, though. Shirley works some humor in, and as mentioned there's a definite trash fiction vibe here, like when Prentice is seduced by a fast-talking Hollywood beauty named Lissa, who takes him upstairs during a party and proceeds to have her way with him. This scene isn't just for show, as Prentice is taken on a sort of astral trip during it, and realizes he and Lissa are being watched by someone in another room -- being watched remotely, that is. Again, the creepy connotations of the real meanings behind pleasure and fame and etc.

The novel is such an engrossing and well-crafted tale that I really don't want to say too much about it for fear of ruining it for others. Shirley proves himself a master of juggling his large cast and putting them together at just the right time. Even the finale is well done, something I've found is usually rare in horror fiction. In fact the finale could come right out of the Specialist, with an armed group of heroes infiltrating the Doublekey Ranch and blowing bastards away.

I'm not sure of the original printing, but this 1999 Leisure edition is fraught with grammatical errors. I mean, to an absurd degree. Also, it's apparently been taken from a British typescript, as British spellings prevail: "tire" is "tyre," "flavor" is "flavour," and so on. I see that Shirley published a revised edition in 2005, however it also appears that he rewrote the book to a certain degree. It might be worth tracking down one of these days.

The Specialist #3: Sullivan's Revenge

The Specialist #3: Sullivan's Revenge, by John Cutter
June, 1984 Signet Books

I'm happy to report that with this third volume The Specialist series improves in a big way. I complained in my reviews of the previous two installments about the needless padding, the overblown and unnecessary descriptive detail, the lack of novelty in the action sequences. But "John Cutter" (aka cyberpunk/horror novelist John Shirley) pulls a 180 here and delivers by far the best volume yet.

Jack "Specialist" Sullivan is a top mercenary who takes jobs for those who have been injured or damaged in some way; in other words, he works for the little guy. Sullivan does so because he himself has been injured; his wife was killed years ago in a bombing which was intended to kill Sullivan himself. He has spent these years trying to find out who was behind the bombing; in the first volume of the series he killed the man who actually planted the bomb. In the second volume Sullivan picked up leads on the man who hired that bomber -- a mythical terrorist leader called the Blue Man (who appears to be unaffiliated with the group that bears his name). Sullivan has finally tracked down the Blue Man, discovering that he runs a terrorist-training compound hidden in the wilds of Utah, right here in the US.

This time, then, Sullivan himself is the client, and so hires his handler Malta to gather together a strike force to help in a raid on the compound. Malta brings in Merlin, a wiry explosives expert, and Horst, a shit-kicking German. On their first night in Utah, enjoying a beer at the local redneck bar, Sullivan and Malta are attacked by a few racist locals. This leads to an endless and grating subplot in which two of the hicks plot their revenge -- but, surprisingly, this subplot leads to disastrous and series-changing consequences.

The novel doesn't really pick up until halfway through, when Sullivan goes undercover into the Blue Man's compound; Sullivan's cover name is a definite in-joke, "Richard Stark." Here Sullivan finally meets his enemy face-to-face...or maybe that should be "face-to-skull." The Blue Man gets his moniker from a blue skull which was tattooed on his face years ago when he was captured by enemy forces. There are all sorts of horror connotations in Sullivan's Revenge: one of the terrorists has a mutilated face, his nose blown off, and Shelley delights in describing this detail. Then there's Tora, the Blue Man's daughter, a nubile half-West Indies girl in her mid-20s whom Shelley refers to as a "witch," and not in the figurative sense.

The Blue Man doesn't recognize Sullivan, and Sullivan gambled he wouldn't, anyway; the Blue Man just took a job and sent someone out to do the actual bombing, he had no grudge or even awareness of Sullivan himself. Hence, though Sullivan has killed the actual bomber and now intends to kill his hirer, he still doesn't know who actually hired the Blue Man himself. This is Sullivan's second objective: to find any files the Blue Man has kept and discover, finally, who ordered his death all those years ago. However the Blue Man isn't the man he used to be, his brain addled by heroin spiked with cocaine. He stumbles about the compound in fogs of delusion like some absinthe-chugging 19th century poet.

Tora, the Blue Man's daughter, appears to be the true power here. Basically the only thing the Blue Man does is order Sullivan to undergo a "test" to ensure he's fit to be a trainer in the camp. This is an overlong but entertaining sequence in which Sullivan disregards his orders not to kill his opponents and goes into a red fury, smashing them apart with a makeshift spiked mace. But after this the Blue Man fades into the background and Sullivan becomes more concerned with Tora, whom he gradually develops feelings for. Tora has slept with all 50-some men in the compound (terrorists from around the world, the lot of them), but has only slept with each of them once. Sullivan however, as can be expected, is something "special." Tora can't get enough of him and Shelley provides a few graphic sex scenes.

Meanwhile Sullivan plans his attack. The terrorists in the compound are a mixture of IRA, PLO, the works. The rule is that politics are not to be discussed here; the men are here solely to learn how to kill. Sullivan gathers together the PLO fanatics and starts spreading gossip -- he tells them half of the camp is part of "the Zionist Conspiracy" and is against them. Shelley delivers a lot of dark comedy here, as Sullivan works the PLO terrorists into a froth.

It all ends with a big battle scene, one which thankfully isn't as tepid as those in the previous two volumes. And, as mentioned, we learn later that more damaging things have occurred in Sullivan's life, things he doesn't become aware of until the final pages. Also, thanks to the Blue Man's files, Sullivan finally learns who exactly ordered his death years ago. This leads to a last-second denouement in which Sullivan gains his vengeance; we literally learn who the culprit is just a handful of pages before Sullivan kills him.

This leads me to wonder, because already by the third volume Sullivan has gained the vengeance he's sought. I had assumed this would be a long-simmer sort of thing, with Sullivan perhaps not even gaining vengeance until the final volume. Also, those "series-changing consequences" mentioned above come into play in the last pages. All told, Sullivan's Revenge could just as easily have been the finale of the series itself, which makes me wonder if Shirley (or Signet Books) was unsure if the series would last beyond three volumes and so wanted to wrap it all up in case it didn't.

Who knows. At any rate the series chugged on for another 8 volumes, and I look forward to continuing on with it, now that it appears Shirley has found his bearings in the world of men's adventure fiction.

The Specialist #2: Manhattan Revenge

The Specialist #2: Manhattan Revenge, by John Cutter

April, 1984 Signet Books

Jack Sullivan returns in a second installment nearly as plodding and padded as the first. Once again "John Cutter" (aka John Shirley) proves that he can fill pages with the best of 'em, giving us another novel that could easily be cut down to half the length.

Now in New York City, Sullivan's tracing some leads he picked up in Talent For Revenge. Sullivan's wife was killed years ago, and he's still trying to figure out who was behind it. But his contact Malta has followed him here, and -- after a pointless scene in which he sets Sullivan up against a trio of thugs to "test" him -- Malta offers a new mission.

A gang known as the Meat Hooks is terrorizing the inner city, snatching runaway children and locking them up in some unknown location where the kids are drugged and used to satisfy the twisted needs of deranged perverts. Behind it all is a former Nazi named Van Kleef and his equally-sicko wife. One thing I admire about Shelley's series is how he bridges the gap between '70s and '80s-style men's adventure novels. The plot of Manhattan Revenge is as lurid as any '70s men's adventure novel, but it also features the gung-ho "guns, guns, guns" bravura that was all the rage in the '80s. (Not to mention that Sullivan gets laid -- and often -- which in itself is another '70s throwback in the sexless '80s world of Mack Bolan, Phoenix Force, and etc.)

Unfortunately Shelley doesn't capitalize on the lurid aspect, for once again he delivers a novel in which nothing happens but his hero stalking various low-tier henchmen and staking out various enemy strongholds as he plans his final assault. The twisted den Van Kleef has created is dealt with in a perfunctory manner, and instead we get endless scenes of Sullivan chasing down Meat Hook members and torturing them for info.

Did I say endless? Everything is drawn out here. If Sullivan chases after some punk, we get 5 pages of tiny type describing each alley, corner, and fire escape Sullivan lopes across -- and each scene ends exactly the same, with Sullivan killing the punk in question. Just like Talent For Revenge, we have here another protracted game of cat and mouse; we know from page one that Sullivan will storm Van Kleef's den and kill the man, and that's finally what happens. And just as in the previous installment, the climax goes exactly like you thought it would.

There are a few colorful patches in the otherwise monochromatic color scheme. This time out Sullivan has an accomplice, a private eye Malta's hired. Sullivan's pissed -- he works alone -- but the way these things go, of course, the private eye turns out to be a smokin' hot babe. This not only leads to plentiful sex but also what I want to think is a little genre parody from Shelley. For the lady constantly chastizes Sullivan for his "kill first" attitude, and Sullivan constantly calls her a "Liberal."

But Sullivan here is a bloodthirsty maniac, one who would do Johnny Rock proud. He murders countless Meat Hookers, torturing them with joy. Even when he tries to do good he's a sicko; my favorite scene is where Sullivan attempts to talk a youth out of the gang life, using as a prop a Meat Hooker Sullivan has just killed. Sullivan puts the boy's face up to the open gut wound -- "Looks like he ate a fast-food burger today! Well, just goes to show what that stuff'll do to you!"

Who knows, maybe Shelley intended Manhattan Revenge to be a satire of men's adventure novels. But at 200 pages of tiny-type padding, the joke is lost.

The Specialist #1: A Talent for Revenge

The Specialist #1: A Talent for Revenge, by John Cutter

Signet, March 1984

The start of an 11-volume series coming in on the tail-end of the men's adventure genre, A Talent for Revenge is a middling start to what I hope will be a better series. Why do I hope? Because in one of my frequent fits of madness, I ordered every single volume of this series before reading a single one. This required a lot of web-searching and cash, so now I'm duty-bound to get my money's worth.

First of all, "John Cutter" is a psuedonym of sci-fi/horror author John Shirley. He wrote all 11 volumes of this series, but these days he disowns them. I hate when authors do that. Stand by your work, even if it's Mein Kampf, you spineless bastards. If you believed in it enough to write it at the time...then it's yellow-bellied to backtrack later on and claim it all as something you did "to pay the bills."

And the Specialist himself, Jack Sullivan, is no yellow-belly. The cover by the way is a bit misleading; note those white-haired temples on the not-to-be-confused-with-Mack-Bolan Mr. Sullivan. I assumed this implied that the Specialist was a bit older than the average men's adventure hero, a salt-and-peppered man of action with more years but more experience than the scum he goes up against. But Sullivan it turns out is a mere 35; the white hair is the result of a shock he endured in the past, when his wife was killed by the KGB or the mob or terrorists or someone. Sullivan's made a lot of enemies in his time so one of the underlying themes of the series is his quest to discover who killed his wife.

A Talent for Revenge opens with Sullivan in France, a few years out of action. He now operates as "The Specialist," taking on big jobs in which someone has suffered at the hands of a powerful enemy. His contact, Malta, a former CIA operative, arranges Sullivan's latest job -- to kill Ottoowa, an Idi Amin-type who has been ousted from his "empire" in Africa and now lives in exile in France. A madman with a penchant for torture and murder, he struts about in the uniform of a 19th Century British officer and commands several mercenaries as his private army. Sullivan is hired to bring his employer, Julia Penn, the head of Ottoowa on a silver platter. Literally. Penn's sister was murdered by Ottoowa and she has been driven insane by her lust for vengeance.

Ottoowa is holed up in an island fortress off the coast of France and Sullivan must storm it alone. In command of Ottoowa's mercenaries is Hayden, Sullivan's old friend and the man who taught him most of what he knows. Hayden is now a shell of his former self and works for the lunatic Ottoowa just because he only lives for his job. In addition to this there are bikers-turned-mercenaries, mafia hitmen, and a nubile French girl who goes nuts for Sullivan's "eight inches of pink steel."

It all sounds exciting, doesn't it? Unfortunately, the novel itself doesn't live up to it.

A Talent for Revenge is as single-minded as a Joseph Rosenberger novel. For 180+ dense pages of tiny type we read as Sullivan scouts Ottoowa's fortress, plans his attack, kills a few guards, and then sneaks away. On and on and on. There's no variety or surprise or anything! It's relentless in its narrow vision. Everything is stretched out until we reach the finale, which is, of course, Sullivan finally storming the fortress and dealing with Hayden and Ottoowa. Everything beforehand is just filler, and what's most frustrating is that it's such padded filter.

Unlike most men's adventure fiction, A Talent for Revenge is at times nearly poetic in its description of the verdant foliage and jagged crags which make up the scenery -- good writing, but it comes off as turgid in a novel about a commando on a murderous mission. To make matters worse, when the ending arrives it all goes down exactly as you expected it would.

Thumbing through the other novels in the series it appears that they improve, that they open up a little. Here's hoping, because I am now committed to seeing this thing through.