Butler #3: The Slayboys

Butler #3: The Slayboys, by Philip Kirk
No month stated, 1979  Leisure Books

The third volume of Butler picks up some unspecified time after the previous volume, the events of which are referred to as “a long time ago.” We do learn that the first volume was three years ago, and when we meet up with him Butler’s in the Caribbean, checking out some hot blonde from afar with a pair of binoculars. And no, he’s not on assignment – Butler’s on vacation, and he’s just kind of pervy that way.

And speaking of which, when Butler hits on the lady it’s in a way that would even make a horny teenager cringe. The Slayboys runs to over 200 pages, and a lot of the running time is made up of long, discursive dialog, usually of a “You wanna have sex?” nature. Here we get our first, uh, taste of this, as Butler hits on the lady by telling her how good he is at dining at the Y – and this like mere seconds after he’s introduced himself. It goes on and on, with Butler doling out lines that would get a guy slapped (at least!), but instead serves to catch the lady’s interest. But just as he’s sealed the deal and he and the lady are headed for her room, a representative of the Bancroft Institute shows up and calls Butler away.

Not to worry, as Butler will get plenty of tail in the ensuing novel. There’s actually more sex in this one than the previous two, I believe, which is funny when you consider how often Butler reflects on his poor relationships with women. In Miami Butler briefly meets with Sheffield, the never-seen head of the Institute; he tasks Butler with posing as a “wealthy Mexican” to infiltrate a right-wing Cuban patriotic force which is in league with HYDRA, that military-industrial complex that has engineered the deaths of various politicians…including, as Butler and Sheffield discuss in humorously casual tones, the murder of JFK.

Butler has the gig because he speaks Spanish fluently, and soon enough he’s “Hector Suarez, of Mexico,” as he constantly introduces himself to all and sundry in Miami. He gets in the graces of the Cuban Patriotic Front rather easily, first bullying his way between a bickering couple, then beating up the irate husband. This puts him in line with Armando Gonzalez, who happens to be one of the Patriotic Front bigwigs. There is a definite humorous tone to the series, and it’s all very light hearted as Butler bluffs his way into the fold as a macho millionaire who happens to be a supreme sharpshooter…just what the Front might be looking for in their plot to assassinate President Jones.

As we’ll recall, Butler is very left-leaning, and Jones, a Democrat, must die because not only does he plan to formally recognize Cuba, which infuriates the right-winger Patriotic Front, but because he also plans to nationalize the banks and other Leftist stuff. Per the series overview he kindly provided for my review of the first volume, Len seems to regret the left-wing tone of the series. However I’d say his only fault here is the naïvety that politicians actually do anything they promise. But anyway, Jones, who will be giving a speech at Union Square, is to be killed by Cuban sniper…some of them the very same who killed JFK, years before; something also conveyed by glib dialog.

Speaking of which, there’s a part early on in the Miami portion where Butler checks into a hotel and discovers that the older guy behind the counter is gay and, guess what, has developed a crush on Butler. This results in Butler ridiculing the dude in dialog that would consign The Slayboys to the average college campus book-burning of today…isn’t if funny how what was once acceptable to the Left soon becomes the very thing the Left stands against? (At least the Right is consistent – they’re against anything that’s fun.) But anyway, while the gay-bashing Butler puts this guy through would no doubt have been considered too much even in 1979, the fact remains that it actually saw print. Today that certainly wouldn’t happen…unless of course the character doing the bashing was clearly definted as your cliched “homophobic straight white male villain.”

All this makes me curious…Butler was e-published a few years ago, but didn’t make it past the second volume due to poor sales. I wonder how the publisher would’ve handled this material in The Slayboys. Would they have just removed it? Or left it in? My jaded senses figure the former…I was recently contacted by a reader who was wondering what happened to all the sleazy sex scenes in the recent eBook editions of The Specialist. After consulting one of my reviews, he concluded that, indeed, the sexual material had been gutted from the eBooks. In other words, Jack Sullivan meets Thomas Bowdler. I might do a longer post on this in future, but anyway, it’s just another sad example of how our sensitive modern era can’t handle what was once considered disposable pulp fiction.

Oh, and if that wasn’t enough…just wonder how the eBook publisher would’ve handled this: one night a dopesmoking sixteen year-old comes to Butler’s hotel room, asks for his help fixing the TV in her room because her mom’s gone out for the night, and Butler decides to fuck her teenaged brains out, whether she likes it or not. He begins in his usual method, hitting on her in outrageous XXX dialog. He then proceeds to screw her silly, the teen giving as good as she gets – she informs Butler she’s fucked the majority of her high school football team – and folks all this goes on for a good 20 pages. So we’ve got gay bashing and underaged sex in this “left-leaning” book…my how the times have changed.

Having gained the trust of the Patriotic Front, Butler sends info back to the Bancroft Institute in another XXX sequence; just a few hours after boffing the teen girl all night long, Butler’s contacted by a sexy redheaded Institute agent posing, naturally, as a hooker. So our boy Butler of course insists she go through with her act up in his room…after all, the place could be bugged, and whoever’s listening in will have to believe Butler’s really getting laid by a pro. So we get another long sex scene as Butler relays info we readers already know while he screws her silly. Not that much comes out of this, as Butler’s all on his own when the next day Armando takes him to California for a rundown of the plot, after which they head to New York. Butler’s under watch the whole time and can’t even let the Institute know where he is.

The attempted assassination of President Jones goes down in almost anticlimactic fashion; Butler quickly deduces he’ll be the Lee Harvey Oswald of this particular plot, and takes matters into his own hands. This leads to one of the better parts in the book when Butler escapes into New York, the cops and the Feds all out to get him…for as with the JFK murder, they’re all part of HYRDA and in on the assassination attempt. This part also sees the return of Wilma B. Willoughby, Butler’s sort-of girlfriend who has been appearing since the first volume. Now she claims to hate Butler, for having “raped” her in the finale of the previous volume, which Butler shrugs off as happening “a long time ago,” so he tells her to just let it go. Wilma doesn’t stick around long, but Len makes it clear that Butler has feelings for her and seems to understand she is the woman for him.

The Jones stuff handled a little too quickly, Len comes up with a new plot to fill out the rest of the novel; Sheffield calls Butler in again and wants him to find out who was behind the plot to kill Jones. It was, of course, the CIA; in particular Butler’s old boss FJ Shankham made the order. So we have another returning character; Butler gets him via another sexy Institute agent, this one a rock chick named Cora Calloway (who of course Butler also screws, but this time it happens off-page). Shankham has a weakness for willowy blondes, so Cora, who of course is one, easily gets past his defenses, drugs him, and questions him, and thus it’s learned that a certain Swami Coomiswamicurry is the one who brainwashed Shankham and ordered him to have President Jones killed.

So the finale goes off on a different tack, with Butler infiltrating the Swami’s ranch near Mount Shasta, where he runs into another recurring character – his ex-wife Brenda, whom Butler engages in more long dialog before screwing. The dude seriously does pretty well for himself, it must be said. But at this point Len’s no longer concerned with writing an “action novel,” per se, such that Butler’s kidnapping and interrogating of the Swami comes off as incredibly easy. But then I don’t think one should look to Butler for action, even though it’s how Leisure Books packaged it…it’s really more of a satire sort of thing, more about the goofy characters and situations and the fun dialog.

Overall the series is growing on me, now that I know what to expect from it…it’s sort of like, I don’t know, maybe James Bond by way of Mel Brooks, courtesy the editors at Penthouse Forum.