Sharky’s Machine

Sharky’s Machine, by William Diehl

August, 1979  Dell Books

I’d only ever heard of Sharky’s Machine, and that was in relation to the 1981 Burt Reynolds movie, which I’ve still never seen. My mom was a big Burt Reynolds fan, like I expect most women were at the time, so I assume that’s how I first heard of the movie. I was only six or seven years old at the time. I’m not sure if I ever knew that the movie was based on a novel; even over the years when I’ve gone on periodic ‘70s crime novel kicks, I haven’t come across William Diehl’s original Sharky’s Machine, first published in hardcover in 1978. But the other month – on Father’s Day of this year, in fact – I spotted this Dell paperback edition at the Plano Half Price Bookstore, for a whopping $1.75. Yes, it irks me that the bookstore chain no longer lives up to its name – I mean the original cover price itself was under a dollar – but that seemed cheap enough. 

First of all a note on the awesome cover art. I can’t make out the signature, and online searching has not revealed who did the artwork for this Dell paperback. I see what appears to be an “S” and a “V” in the artwork signature, so I’m wondering if this is the work of Charles Sovek, who did the also-awesome cover art for Dakota #3 (per Bob Deis, who identified the artwork for me). The art style appears to be similar, so it’s possible. Also of note is that this is one of those double-bang-for-your-buck covers (actually, double-bang-for-your-buck-seventy-five, in my case), as it opens into a two-page spread, featuring characters and incidents from the novel. Another interesting note is that the Sharky depicted on the cover looks more like Nick Nolte than Burt Reynolds, but of course this paperback was published two years before the film was released. Here is the interior art:

But as mentioned I never saw the film, and now that I’ve read the novel I’m not sure if I’m in a hurry to. This is mainly because, judging from the trailer, the film version of Sharky’s Machine appears to be a completely different story from Diehl’s original novel. The dialog and situations in that trailer have no relation to anything in this novel. Reading Marty McKee’s review at the Craneshot blog leads me to conclude that director-star Reynolds and his screenwriters completely reshaped the original narrative; I mean the stuff Marty mentions, with one of the villains being an Italian mobster with a psycho brother (played by Henry Silva no less!) is unlike anything in the novel. Indeed, the villain of the novel appears to have walked out of a James Bond film: he’s a corpulent sadist with a legion of Chinese assassins at his disposal, and has an inventor who makes giant robots for him. 

This Dell paperback is stuffed to the gills with rave reviews from industry publications. A funny thing is that a glance at the Kirkus reviews of ensuing Diehl novels sees the word “derivative” most often used. I say this is funny because I found Sharky’s Machine itself derivative. As mentioned the villain and his henchmen come out of Bond, the humorous “cop banter” and the cast of quirky cops are out of Joseph Wambaugh and/or Ed McBain, and there’s even a part where an audio tape is transcribed for us that could be straight out of The Anderson Tapes by Lawrence Sanders. There’s also an “Oriental menace” motif here courtesy the villain that brings to mind Eric Lustabader’s The Ninja, but that novel came later. Sharky’s Machine even concludes more like a James Bond movie than it does a cop thriller, with Sharky and his “Machine” trying to track down an assassin in an amusement park filled with giant robots. And I haven’t even mentioned the pseudo-ninjas who attack Sharky earlier in the book. 

The novel, if you haven’t guessed, is pretty pulpy (I mean that as a compliment), but it’s presented on the level, and I’d wager those industry reviewers were so kind to it because they themselves had no experience in pulp. So while I found Sharky’s Machine derivative and sloppily written, those contemporary reviewers probably couldn’t believe how exciting it was…at least when compared to the usual highbrow shit they had to review. But Sharky’s Machine received a hardcover printing, meaning those professional reviewers covered it for their various highbrow publications – unlike something vastly superior, like, say Bronson: Blind Rage – and thus their rave reviews take up the first few pages of this paperback edition. Another thing I haven’t mentioned yet is that Sharky’s Machine is also packaged here like your typical ‘70s potboiler (also a compliment), the copy and blurbs hyping the action and sex…both of which turn out to be relatively mild. 

At 479 small-print pages, Sharky’s Machine is also of a piece with the typical 1970s crime thriller. But first-time writer Diehl spins his wheels too much to make those pages count. The bloated page length could be another inspiration from Lawrence Sanders, in fact; it seems clear to me that Diehl was inspired by Sanders and looking to mimic his template. What little research I’ve done on William Diehl informs me that he was fifty years old when he started writing this, his first novel. That Sharky’s Machine is a first novel is very evident. The plot jumps around too much, too many characters are shuffled into the narrative with too little impact, and not enough is done to exploit the various situations. Also, most unforgivably, Diehl is a rampant POV-hopper, to the extent that the reader is often confused. By POV-hopping I mean when the narrative switches perspectives without warning the reader via a space break or a new chapter. 

This comes and goes, though; sometimes Diehl cuts chapters when he cuts perspectives, but in the sections with Sharky and the other cops he really POV-hops. And also the novel is several stories tied together: in addition to the tough cop Sharky narrative, we also have material on the 1975 Democrat convention, a Senator who intends to be the next President (Jimmy Carter be damned!), and the Bond-esque villain planning to unveil his massive robot amusement park. But we have to wait a while to even get to all that: the novel starts with two sort of false openings. The first, shorter one, takes place in 1944 Italy, with a GI dropped behind enemy lines to oversee a cargo drop or somesuch; it’s all maddeningly vague for reasons of suspense. Then we jump ahead to 1959 Hong Kong, for a too-long sequence in which an assassin kills a guy while he’s being entertained by a blind prostitute in an opulent cathouse. 

After all this we finally get to grizzled Atlanta cop Sharky, and from here on out the novel is set in 1975. But despite the recent date Diehl still delivers an anachronism; we’re told a character sports a Wings Across America t-shirt, but that album wasn’t released until late 1976. Otherwise the ’75 setting is mostly because one of the subplots ties in to the race to see who will get the nod for to be the Presidential nominee on the Democrat ticket. Unfortunately this stuff, and the pseudo-Bond stuff with the supervillain (whose name is DeLaroza) takes over from the cop thriller I wanted. And sure enough the cop material we do get in Sharky’s Machine is by far the best material in the book. This depsite Sharky himself, who comes off as a bit of a cipher. 

For one, I had a helluva time seeing Burt Reynolds in the role; indeed, the unknown cover artist had the right idea with Nick Nolte, who certainly would’ve been a better choice for the grim and mostly somnambulant protagonist Diehl has given us. But then, Sharky is essentially a supporting character in the novel. As it turns out, the “Machine” of the title is the Vice squad Sharky soon takes control of…or, he sort of takes control of. He still reports to a boss, Lt. Friscoe (the aforementioned guy in the anachronistic Wings shirt), who makes all the decisions. And in fact, the novel is more of an ensemble piece than I expected. Here is where the McBain stuff comes in, as Diehl spends a lot of time with the guys on Sharky’s Machine, with the typical cop banter and jaded outlooks on life and all the expected tropes. What I mean to say is, the book is not a single-protagonist thriller; there are huge portions of the narrative where Sharky disappears. And the other helluva thing is, he isn’t the most effectual of tough cop protagonists. 

This is not evident in Sharky’s intro, though. We meet him while he is in Narcotics, having lived on the streets for several months and growing a shaggy beard in the process to fit in with the underworld scum he’s trying to take down. The opening is super ‘70s with Sharky getting in a shootout with a pimp-attired drug dealer. But the shootout takes place on a commuter bus the dealer has fled onto, and even though Sharky takes him down he’s in trouble with the higher-ups for the incident. I should mention here that the novel is not overly violent, and only features a few action scenes. Also of note is that Sharky’s gun is a 9mm automatic, the make and model never noted, which seems like an unusual gun for a 1975 cop to have. Not that I minded; as I’ve said before, I don’t exactly look for realism in a cop thriller. I mean my favorite tough cop yarn is Stallone’s Cobra, and that movie’s as grounded in reality as the current administration. 

Sharky is reprimanded by top cop The Bat, a petty official who puts public relations ahead of all else. This is a funny scene with the bizarre bit of Sharky taking off his shoe to stratch his foot. Sharky is then moved to the purgatory of Vice, the place no cop wants to be – clearly the days before Crockett and Tubbs made Vice the coolest department of all. But here’s the funny thing, and yet more evidence that Diehl was a first-time writer; he does absolutely nothing to exploit the entire “Vice” setup, and indeed the plot sees Sharky’s Machine tackling not only a homicide investigation but even a political conspiracy. Sharky being sent to the Vice Squad is essentially window dressing, as it has no bearing on anything that happens, and even though earlier I said I don’t really demand “realism” in cop thrillers, it’s still super hard to buy how these Vice guys are able to skirt regulations and handle a homicide investigation and not let the actual Homicide Department know about it. This is where the movie appears to diverge; the trailer has scenes of Sharky being informed about hookers by the guys in his Machine, ie actual “Vice” stuff, but there’s nothing like that in the novel. 

Another indication of Diehl’s first-time writing is that he tells a lot more than he shows. This occurs throughout the novel, but particularly with the cops who make up the Machine. He clearly wants to have a McBain-esque group of memorable characters, but the problem is he tells us about them instead of displaying their quirks in action. For example, in the previously-mentioned bit where the Machine decides to buck authority and investigate a homicide without letting any other department know. Lt. Friscoe tells the guys they’re crazy if they think they can buck regulations, and then there’s a bit where Machine member Papa starts ranting and raving, and then storms out of the room. Diehl then proceeds to tell us that Papa rarely ever speaks, thus this explosion of his is shocking to the other guys. The thing is, though, we readers have barely seen anything about Papa, so it’s not like we know he rarely speaks. In other words Diehl clearly intends all this to be humorous, like we’re going to chuckle that the guy who never talks just spouted off a few paragraphs of run-on sentences…but in essence Diehl has given us the punchline first and the setup second, so it falls flat. In other words, he has failed to earn that chuckle. 

The Vice stuff that is here is actually interesting, and is as mentioned clearly inspired by The Anderson Tapes. Friscoe informs Sharky that the Machine has been tracking a hooker who has a phone sex operation going, and after tapping her line they’ve come across what they think is a blackmail scheme. Friscoe plays the pertinent recording for Sharky and the ensuing transcript goes on for some pages, very much akin to the text of The Anderson Tapes, and just as explicit as Lawrence Sanders could be. Perhaps even more so, with the hooker engaging in phone sex with some caller and all the ensuing sleazy detail…but again, not an actual sex scene. Just a lot of transcribed dialog, a la The Anderson Tapes. 

And that, folks, is pretty much it for the entire Vice setup. The Machine learns that another hooker might be part of this scheme, a mysterious figure called “Domino,” and Sharky comes up with the idea of having his cop pal The Nosh bug Domino’s posh penthouse suite. So yes, The Nosh, Papa, The Bat, Sharky – a bunch of quirky and colorful names for what Diehl intends to be a quirky and colorful group, to the extent that you wonder why he never wrote a followup. Oh and I forgot to mention, but Sharky’s first name is never given. Hell, “Sharky” could even be his first name, a la Shark Trager. He’s barely even described, though we learn he has a broken nose. We also learn he was in military intelligence for a bit, as in one sequence they visit an army base to ask questions about a top secret WWII missions, questioning a kooky old vet. Diehl excels in these scenes, writing a goofy spin on the average cop thriller, but there’s just too much flab with all the DeLaroza material, not to mention the material with Hotchins, the would-be Democrat nominee who is in deep with villainous DeLaroza. 

This brings us to another implausibe scenario: mega-babe Domino, a sort of modern-day Phryne of Athens, runs into Sharky, who is disguised as an elevator repairman, and falls for him. I mean this hotstuff brunette who makes her living as a super high-class hooker and is engaged to would-be President Hotchins and is the casual bedmate of supervillain DeLaroza just bumps into a guy who appears to be fixing the elevator in her apartment building and she thinks how good-looking he is. Sharky is in the disguise because he and the Machine are bugging the place, and later he shadows Domino at an upscale grocery store…where she bumps into him again. And invites him to her place for shark fin soup!! It’s one of the more implausible lust-at-first-sight scenarios ever. 

What’s even crazier is…Sharky and Domino never even have sex! Not here, not later in the book, not ever in the book! Domino bats her eyes at Sharky and the dueling perspectives let us know how attracted they are to each other, but Sharky says he’s gotta go and runs back up to the roof of the building, where he lays on a cot and monitors those bugs in Domino’s apartment via a pair of headphones. It turns out that Domino does have sex…with DeLaroza. This is the only other sex scene in Sharky’s Machine, and it’s more of an oral/handjob sort of thing which again goes for the “Oriental mystique,” Domino dressed up in robes and all that nonsense. And Sharky jerks off as he listens! Or at least he orgasms unintentionally while lying on that cot. “Soon to be a major motion picture!” 

The homicide stuff comes up when Diehl takes some unexpected directions with the Sharky-Domino scenario. This whole bit was hard to buy, but hell, they investigated homicides on Miami Vice, too. (If you can’t tell, I’ve been watching Miami Vice again.) Here we really do get a sort of cop novel, with Sharky and his Machine researching a murder, and hurrying up about it because they only have a few days until the department heads come in and the homicide has to be reported through the proper channels. Diehl again delivers an ensemble pice, with a quirky coroner also becoming a part of the team – again, Sharky himself is just one of the characters here, and the novel just as easily could’ve been titled “Papa’s Machine.” But then that sounds kind of dirty. 

But the DeLaroza-Hotchins stuff just takes up too much space. There’s also a lot of stuff about a professional assassin with fraying nerves who ultimately turns out to be tied into the opening stuff in WWII. Again though so much of it is told rather than shown. Gradually we head into the big finale, which again comes more from Bond than McBain: DeLaroza has spent oodles of money on “Pachinko!,” a high-rise amusement park with giant robots and whatnot. The name of the place, “Pachinko,” of course comes from that pinball-esque game that’s so popular in Japan. Along with Cheap Trick, of course. 

I’m fine with the sub-Bond finale, but in a real James Bond movie Bond himself will actually take place in the events. In Sharky’s Machine, our supposed hero Sharky is off-page for the majority of the climax, which instead concerns that pill-popping assassin out for revenge on Hotchins and DeLaroza. I mean really, Sharky and his Machine spend the time running around Pachinko! and trying to find the various people they’re after. But then by this point Sharky has been through a bit of a wringer; captured briefly by DeLaroza, he’s been beaten by those pseudo-ninjas, had some of his pinky finger chopped off, and managed to escape in one of the novel’s few real action scenes. So one could understand if Sharky’s a little tuckered out here in the finale. 

As mentioned, the biggest surprise is that Diehl didn’t farm these characters out into a series. Also as mentioned, I can see where Burt Reynolds and crew likely rewrote a large portion of this narrative to make it more fitting for the bigscreen. Surely Sharky was more engaged in the finale than he is here – I mean Sharky in the novel doesn’t even take out any of the major villains. But then Diehl makes curious writing decisions like this throughout the novel; I refer you again to the inexplicable non-boinking of Sharky and Domino. That one’s an almost unfathomable miss on Diehl’s part. 

You’d never guess, but overall I did enjoy Sharky’s Machine, at least when it was sticking to the “tough cop” material I wanted. I could’ve done without a lot of the political subplot and the Oriental mystique with DeLaroza. I also found myself getting bored toward the end, which you wouldn’t expect given that the finale featured literal giant robots. Then again, I might’ve been more into the crazy finale if Sharky himself had been more involved in it. But overall, I guess I have to say I was mostly entertained for my buck seventy-five.