Cuba: Sugar, Sex, And Slaughter

Cuba: Sugar, Sex, And Slaughter, edited by Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle

No month stated, 2018  New Texture

I’ve been meaning to read this installment of the Men’s Adventure Library Journal for a few years now. Bob Deis and his co-editor Wyatt Doyle consistently turn out high-quality hardcover volumes with excellent production standards, and Cuba: Sugar, Sex, And Slaughter is no exception. And as usual with these two, the theme of the book is very original: men’s mag stories dealing with Cuba, from the days of the Batista dictaroship to the days of the Castro dictatorship. 

In some ways the book is similar to a vintage men’s adventure anthology: Our Secret War Against Red China, but as ever Deis and Doyle are not limited to one “line” of men’s adventure magazines. The stories collected here run the gamut from “straight reporting” to the “sweats.” One thing I was surprised that was not featured was the story featured on the cover of the book, or at least a story with a similar setup: namely, a sadistic Cuban torture-babe, ie the jackbooted Cuban equivalent of a Nazi She-Devil. Rather, the female characters who appear in Cuba: Sugar, Sex, and Slaughter are either hapless hotstuffs who have somehow gotten caught up in the various revolutions of Cuba, or are hotstuff revolutioniaries who fight against Castro. So, there is no story here with a, uh, Commie She-Devil. But then maybe Deis and Doyle will do a Volume 2 someday. 

As I was reading the book I chuckled at the lofty treatment these stories and art were given by Bob and Wyatt. Not that I’m complaining, or “taking the piss” as the British would say (or once said). It’s just that…these old men’s adventure magazines were the epitome of disposable entertainment. They were read and thrown away, which no doubt is one of the reasons copies are so pricey today; more were destroyed than stored. Ruggedly virile vets of the mid 20th century weren’t concerned with plastic archival bags to store pristine-quality copies of their magazines in; they read the mags while enjoying a few drinks and smokes and then threw them in the garbage like real men. But here those once-disposable stories are, printed on high-quality paper and bound in hardcover and given a deluxe presentation that is well beyond their grubby roots. 

In the Men’s Adventure Library Journal books, Bob Deis gives a sole intro at the start of the book, rather than an intro before each story. Once again his intro is informative and gives succinct detail on the origins of the men’s mags and how these particular yarns were concerned with, first, the Batista regime and its sadism, and then later the Castro regime and its sadism. Bob astutely notes how Castro and his men were the “good guys” in some of the earliest stories, until he began his own progroms upon attaining power, after which he and his jackbooted minions were essentially the Nazis of the ‘60s in the men’s mags. 

First up we have “Havana’s Amazing Flesh Market,” by JL Pimsleur and from the June 1958 Sir. This one is an informative, “straight” reporting piece on…the various hookers of Batista-era Cuba! We get a thorough rundown, complete with costs and where to find them, of the lowly street whores on up to the deluxe “hotel” girls who cost a bunch. The author names names and places and one wonders if they are fictional or real; regardless, this one is written like a standard report with none of the pulp conceits more typical of men’s adventure mag stories. 

The story that gave this collection its title is next: “Sugar, Sex, and Slaughter,” by Joseph Hazlett and from the September 1959 Male. Despite being from one of the Diamond line men’s magazines, this one too is a mostly-factual piece done in a straight reporting style, and details the five centuries of revolution and dictatorship that has plagued Cuba since it was “discovered” by Spaniards. 

We get a bit of factual reporting mixed with the lurid escapism the men’s mags were known for next, with, “Bayamo’s Night Of Terror,” by Don Hogan and from the May 1958 Man’s Magazine. This is one of those stories where Castro is the good guy. We’re told he’s in the Sierra Maestra Mountains with his army, two thousand strong, and the story concerns the titular town of Bayamo which is wholly aligned with Castro. A sadistic Batista officer named Lt. Cowley wages a war on the town after he loses a few soldiers to the rabble – soldiers who were killed for murdering one of the townspeople. This one is also mostly factual-style reporting, but brings the plight of the characters to life by putting the reader there in the action. 

The next story in particular is very good, if overly grim. “Brotherhood of the Scar,” by Jim Greaves as told to Jack Barrows, is from the July 1959 Adventures For Men and is a long tale that is more brutal survival epic than escapist pulp fun. “Greaves” takes us through his harrowing tale of torture and eventual freedom; he’s an expat carpenter, a WWII vet per men’s mag tradition, and he falls in with a local gal who agrees to go in-country with him, despite the government’s stipulation that foreigners are not allowed to venture outside of Havana. For reasons not properly explored, Greaves goes anyway, and of course is captured and thrown in a prison by the sadistic Batista enforcers. But man this one is indeed grueling and just keeps going and going. It takes up pages 64-96 in Cuba: Sugar, Sex, and Slaughter, and the majority of those pages are dedicated to the various depredations Greaves endures in his imprisonment, up to and including losing some fingers and even getting the US flag branded on his back. But it’s no Russian epic or anything; it’s still the expected macho stylings of the men’s mag genre, to the extent that Greaves endures his torture with a grim fatality. That said, author Jack Barrows seems to know a bit too much about what it’s like to be tortured in captivity, to the extent that you hope the guy isn’t talking from direct experience. 

We’re back to the more factual vibe with “Castro’s Commie Blueprint To Take Over Latin America,” from the October 1961 Cavalcade and by George Vedder Jones. This one’s an interesting “What if?” sort of scenario about Castro taking over the Dominican Republic – and then the rest of South America, uniting the various countries into a Latin America USSR. 

My favorite yarn is next: “Terror! Cuban Hell-Cats Scare Castro’s Cutthroats,” by Miguel Gonzales and from the September 1964 Man’s Peril. This was one of the “sweats,” so the concern here isn’t so much relaying “fact” as it is delivering a fast-moving tale filled with t&a and sadism. Told in third person, this one’s unique though in that the titular hell-cats are the heroines of the piece; the short, fast-moving story is essentially devoted to the rebel women hitting a ship filled with Castro men and blasting the shit out of them. There’s no sex, but we are informed that the gals are “magnificently proportioned” and that they are led by a former high-class hooker who calls herself The Avenger. Also I got a kick out of the term “glamazon” being used to describe these gun-toting beauties. Gonzales also delivers some nice gore: “[The Castro soldier’s] brains spilled out in a jelly-like glob on the sand.” 

More sweat-mag sadism continues in the next story, “Squirm In Hell, My Lovely Muchacha,” by sweat vet Jim McDonald and from the June 1964 Man’s Story. Like the previous yarn, this one’s also in third-person perspective, and comes off like a hardboiled private eye story for the first half. It concerns lovely Roberta Trent, with her “high, impudent breasts,” who comes into fellow American Carmody’s place and begs him to escort her out of Cuba in his boat. McDonald really lays on the hardboiled stylistic touches, with Carmody immediately knowing the beauty is nothing but trouble, but ultimately deciding to help her – after a little off-page sex, of course. But then the story detours into sweat mag territory when Roberta is captured by a Castro sadist and is tortured with a cigar to her naked limbs, captured due to the preposterous premise that she managed to take a photo of herself and some Castro flunky with top-secret jets behind them, and she wants to get this photo to the American government. Who took this photo is curiously left unstated, unless that is Roberta was taking a selfie in 1964…which is about as believable as the premise of the story itself, what with how bulky those cameras were back then. 

Jim McDonald returns with “Kiss The Skull Of Death, My Beautiful Muchacha,” from the September 1965 New Man. Wait, technically it’s by “Linda Rogers,” this being another of those bullshit “as told to” yarns. Well, “Linda” tells us about her hot affair with some Castro supporter during the Batista years (“Our hips ground together in an expression of mutual need”), but upon Castro attaining power she finds herself on the wrong side, and is captured by a sadist called El Toro. This one has the most baffling WTF copout ending I’ve yet read in one of these stories; while torturing Linda and about to rape her, El Toro conveniently collapses from a drug overdose, dies, and Linda escapes in his car! 

“Castro’s Bacterial Warfare Chief Wants To Defect – My Job: Get Him” is by Robert F. Dorr and from the April 1971 Man’s Illustrated. It’s another “as told to” yarn, the person supposedly telling this fictional tale being a marine biologist named Hal Gorby. He’s heading to Cuba for some marine bioligy symposium, when he’s stopped by a CIA agent who tells him the top marine scientist there – who also happens to be Castro’s chief bacterial warfare expert – wants to defect, and Gorby’s to help if possible. This one’s more of a Cold War yarn and just as easily could’ve been set in East Germany. Gorby is unusual for a men’s mag protagonist in that he’s married, and indeed turns down the advances of the sexy native babe he’s set up with by the Cuban government – there to keep tabs on him, of course. The finale is also on the suspense angle, with Gorby being set up as a propaganda scapegoat by the Cubans and eventually making his escape on a hydrofoil. 

Overall I really enjoyed Cuba: Sugar, Sex, And Slaughter, and it left me wanting more; as ever Wyatt Doyle fills the pages with related men’s mag covers and interior art, and a lot of the stories sound really good – in particular, of course, the ones with the Commie She-Devils. So maybe one of these days we’ll have a volume 2. Otherwise, I’m happy with this one, and heartily recommend it, as I do everything else Bob Deis and his co-editors Wyatt Doyle and Bill Cunningham publish.

Phone Call

Phone Call, by Jon Messmann

May, 1979  Signet Books

After the men’s adventure market dried up in the mid ‘70s, Jon Messmann started turning out lurid one-shot mystery thrillers, this being one of them. Unfortunately for the most part these books are overpriced on the collector’s market, but I managed to get a copy of Phone Call for cheap. This one’s interesting because it’s actually a film tie-in, and indeed is copyright a pair of screenwriters, Michael Butler and Dennis Shyrack, though the film itself didn’t come out until 1982 and was titled Murder By Phone. But make no mistake, this novel is clearly the work of Jon Messmann, written in his unique style, even though the copyright page might fool you into thinking “Jon Messmann” was a pseudonym. 

I’ve never seen Murder By Phone and have no intention to. But it’s interesting that this novel came out three years before the film (a low-budget horror) was released, indicating that Messmann’s novel was based off the script and not the actual movie. In fact, online synopses and reviews of Murder By Phone describe an almost entirely different story, with different characters, but the same general setup. Whatever the background, the novel itself is all very much in-line with Messmann’s usual output, and one could just as easily assume it was an original story of his. It’s less horror than it is a thriller, though there are horror elements to it, particularly given the threat our hero must face: namely, that phones in New York City are randomly killing people by blasting them with a sort of white lightning. 

The novel is very much of another era, then, with the first kill happening at a phone booth, and throughout the novel there’s lots of mystery over whether the phone might ring, or who might be on the other line – things hardly anyone at all would worry about in our modern era. That said, Messmann does introduce answering machines into the narrative at one point, so at least these characters in the late ‘70s have that safeguard. But for the most part the victims in Phone Call are hapless losers who do nothing more than answer the phone and then are zapped into hell. 

At 214 pages of small, dense print Phone Call is similar to most other John Messmann novels in that it turns out to be a much longer read than the page length might indicate. This is because, as was often his wont, Messmann has turned in a sluggish tale that’s more deadening than thrilling. In fact the book was a chore to read at times, and I almost got the impression Messmann himself was struggling with what was, really, a lame setup. I mean “phones killing people” isn’t exactly Jaws, is it? 

Not helping things is the protagonist we’re saddled with, Nate Bridger. Sure, he’s the typical cantankerous Messmann “hero,” quick to anger and lashing out…but what really annoyed me was that the dude was a “crusading consumer advocate” per the back cover…whereas in reality he’s a an environmentalist. From his intro, where he’s listing off all these companies he’s pestering due to their various infringements upon poor old Mother Earth, I was ready to magically transport myself into the book to punch the guy in the face. He’s basically the ruggedly virile macho male version of that shrill modern-day teenaged Scandanavian eco-harpie who’s constantly telling us the world’s about to end. Hell, we even learn that Nate, as Messmann refers to his hero, doesn’t like air conditioners! But at least it’s because he prefers “fresh air,” so it’s not like he gives a speech in the book where he says air conditioning is more dangerous than ISIS or whatever. 

But then, the average Jon Messmann hero is supposed to be annoying, and generally argues with everyone. So then, in his very first scene, Nate is in his homestate of North Dakota and is being given a celebratory luncheon by local businessmen, who congratulate him on his tireless work for the environment…and then the absolute bastard gets up on the podium and says thanks, this is nice and all, but it would’ve been swell if you’d used all the money you paid for this shindig and instead funnelled it to environmental causes, or sent some money to my office, ‘cause we need it there. I mean point taken, but this is our hero, folks. 

And his involvement with the story, which occurs in New York City, is sketchy at best. Nate’s heading into New York for, good grief, an eco-forum or some shit, and while leaving he’s stopped by some slackjawed yokel whose young daughter recently died, under unknown circumstances, in New York. We readers know how, of course – she was the first phone victim, randomly answering a ringing payphone in the subway tunnel and getting zapped to hell for her politeness. Nate says he’ll look into it, and heads off to New York…and there really are frequent scenes where he’s at this week-long convention, getting up on the podium and making speeches about the environment, or listening to others talk about it. Not my thing, but interesting from a modern perspective in that Nate doesn’t want to hector businesses, but instead wants to teach them the benefits of “saving” the planet.  Which doesn’t seem to be the goal anymore. 

Meanwhile random deaths continue in the city – only we readers gradually learn they aren’t random. Messmann neatly introduces the killer by only referring to the yellow Adidas sneakers he wears as he rides his bicycle across the city. Basically if he runs afoul of someone, and the person is rude or whatever, this guy will go back home, find the person’s phone number through mysterious means, and then give him or her a phone call, zapping the victim over the phone line with his special contraption. In the course of this the phone receiver on the other end is fried, and Nate Bridger is the one who slowly discovers this – and also that the New York phone company is hiding it all, and keeping the murders under wraps. 

This elicits several scenes where Nate storms into the phone company main office and starts yelling at the prissy office manager…and, the way these things go, it’s also how Nate manages to pick up what will be the main female character in Phone Call: Beth, a pretty girl in the front office who seems to also believe her company is hiding something big. There’s also stuff with a hardheaded New York cop Nate keeps confronting, with a lot of tantruming between the two, the cop scoring most of the points with his witty put-downs of “cowboy” Nate. 

This brings me to one of Jon Messmann’s more curious authorial quirks: his strange tendency for bonkers dialog modifiers. By which I mean stuff like “he said,” or “she said,” or the like. I’m pretty sure these are referred to as “dialog modifiers,” and generally they are kept innocuous, so as not to distract the reader from the importance of the dialog itself. But Jon Messmann missed this lesson. Instead, he puts all the attention on his goofy modifiers. Rarely ever is it “Nate said,” or even “Nate yelled,” but something more showy like, “Nate threw out,” or, the greatest of all, “Nate slid out.” I mean that’s an actual tag at the end of a line of dialog in Phone Call, but otherwise the book isn’t sleazy at all. Indeed, the two sex scenes are entirely off-page, which is surprising for Messmann and indicates to me he was catering his manuscript to spec. 

The horror stuff is limited to one-off characters, each of whom are given inordinate set-up material, ultimately answering a ringing telephone and getting fried. There is though a great scene where the killer hits a live-on-the-air telethon, zapping the hapless volunteers at the phone banks, but this one’s handled with such melodrama that you can tell Messmann had his tongue in his cheek. In fact the feeling was clear to me that he thought the whole thing was dumb but gave it the old college try – but the only problem is, Messmann’s tone is as every dry and overly serious, making the story seem a lot more ponderous than it should be. The same of which could be said of his other horror paperback of the day, The Deadly Deep. 

Nate works with Beth and a few different cops to track down the killer before he can make another deadly phone call, but Nate Bridger is not the action hero of Messmann’s earlier series paperbacks. He doesn’t really do anything “action” at all in the novel, and doesn’t carry a gun. In fact he pulls one of the dumbest moves ever…he manages to figure out who the killer is and chases him solo, cornering the guy and actually roughing him up a little. The guy agrees to go along with Nate to the cops, but asks if he can change his friggin’ shirt before they go…and Nate lets him! Would you be surprised to learn the dude runs away? 

This at least sets up a goofy finale in which the phone company people come up with this reverse-engineered contraption that will fry the killer when he calls someone, which takes us into an overly suspenseful finale where Nate must call the killer at a certain time…and listen to his inordinate demands. Speaking of which, right before this we lucky readers have “enjoyed” Nate’s own inordinate demands, in a looong closing speech he gives to the eco-forum about man’s threat to the world and etc, etc, to the point you figure John Kerry must’ve read this book when it came out and took notes. Copious notes. 

Overall I found Phone Call middling and glacially paced, and the eco-sermonizing didn’t help matters much. But I only paid a few dollars for the book, so I can’t complain too much.

Depth Force #9: Death Cruise

Depth Force #9: Death Cruise, by Irving A. Greenfield

September, 1988  Zebra Books

How have I gone four years without reading an installment of Depth Force? The most shocking thing is I actually remembered most of what happened in the previous volume before starting Death Cruise; as we know, Irving Greenfield starts every volume en media res, picking up immediately after the previous volume, with zero in the way of background detail to catch up readers who might’ve forgotten what happened…or who might not’ve picked up the previous volume at all. 

So I wasn’t too out of sorts with the big action-rescue operation that opens this ninth installment; bearded hero Admiral Jack Boxer is on a new experimental sub and dropping off some commandos to take out a nuclear facility that’s guarded by Arabic and Russian soldiers, but as usual Greenfield writes the action scenes in outline format, with nothing in the way of the hard-hitting action one might expect from the genre. In fact, most of it is, as usual, relayed from the perspective of Boxer as he gets updates on the commlink on the bridge. But the novel opens on the same apocalyptic image that the previous one ended on, with the mushroom cloud of the destroyed facility off in the distance. 

The “rescue” portion goes on twice as long, and takes up a lot of the novel. As ever the Russians are there, under the command of Borodine, Boxer’s Russian enemy-slash-best friend. Borodine’s ship is destroyed, so Boxer follows the maritme code and rescues the Russians. There’s a lot of stuff about these guys toasting each other and etc. And meanwhile Borodine is in trouble due to hypothermia and frostbite. Then Boxer’s ship gets messed up and they’re stranded in frozen waters, sure to die. They’re rescued by an American vessel that transports cargo and is commanded by a guy named Captain Axelord, who is a “coward” and also an old enemy of Boxer’s…a real enemy, I should say, not an “enemy” like Borodine. 

Axelrod refuses to allow the Russians on his ship given that they are enemies, not even backing down when Boxer enforces his authority as an admiral and thus the true commander of Axelrod’s ship. So Boxer has to put a gun to the guy’s head, which ultimately will take us into the soap opera stuff we expect from Depth Force. Axelrod is the son-in-law of a senator who also has it in for Boxer, leading to a court martial charge. Humorously the back cover copy is as ever incorrect – I’ve long assumed the people at Zebra didn’t even read Greenfield’s manuscripts – and implies that Boxer is sent on a mission due to being court martialed. 

Rather, the soap opera stuff is central to Killer Cruise. And that’s another thing. There’s no “killer cruise” in the book! So again I think Zebra just came up with titles and back cover copy and if Irving Greenfield’s actual manuscript matched it, so much the better, but no big deal if it didn’t. So there’s a lot of stuff about Boxer getting ready for a rigged trial in a kangaroo court, orchestrated by political enemies on made-up charges for a jury that’s predisposed to find him guilty – which was real relevant and topical to read about in 2024, let me tell you – but there’s also stuff about Boxer adopting this 17 year-old kid who, we get confirmation this time, was indeed the son of one of Boxer’s men who was killed in a previous volume, and this time the adoption is made official. This was always a mystery to me because I was missing the earlier volume in which this subplot was set up. 

Oh, and there’s a fair bit about Boxer and his latest flame, an apparently hotstuff lawyer named Francine who is representing Boxer in the adoption. Francine was in previous volume so has been around for a bit, and she lives in DC with Boxer’s former commanding officer Stark, who is recuperating from a heart attack or something. Boxer and Francine get it on a few times in the book, Greenfield as ever delivering his patented explicit sex scenes (“[Boxer’s] cum exploded out of him,” etc – and yes, Greenfield spells it that way). But the veteran men’s adventure reader – or hell even the veteran Depth Force reader – will know this is not headed for a happy ending, if you’ll excuse the lame pun. Because friends, Boxer is in love with Francine, and even asks her to marry him. Hmm…what do you think might happen? I seem to recall Boxer proposed to some other chick earlier in the series, one named Trish, and she got shot in the head and then briefly turned into a vegetable, before dying off-page, and rarely mentioned again. 

Now that I think of it, the titular “death cruise” might refer to Francine’s grim fate…or I could just be reaching. Basically, Francine is abducted by a pair of Italians and eventually smuggled onto a ship in the Mediterranean (or something, I didn’t catch the geography), where she’s kept in a room beneath the deck and gang-raped and sodomized by a pair of swarthy brutes…like for days and days. So much so that, when Boxer finally finds her, Francine too has become a vegetable, raped and defiled so much that she has lost her mind. She’s sent off to a clinic at book’s end and Boxer spends about half a second hoping she’ll be okay, but is more concerned with the novel’s “main” storyline, ie the storyline promised on the back cover…which per series tradition doesn’t even come up in the book until the final quarter. 

But before we get to that, Greenfield spends most of the narrative in a political subplot, with characters who will likely feature in future volumes. For one, there’s Lori-Ann Collins, the sexy executive assistant to the head of the CIA, but secretly a deep-cover KGB agent; Greenfield clearly lays the groundwork for Boxer and Lori-Ann to “come together” in a future volume. Her subplot here sees her ensnaring various bigwig officers in US intelligence while fending off the advances of her sadistic control agent. Lori-Ann’s material was also unexpectedly topical in that it had her outing one high-ranking intelligence guy for being gay, the knowledge of which could ruin his career…! 

There’s also stuff with some rich Texans Boxer hobknobs with as part of his planning to thwart the court marial attemps, including visits with President Spooner. All this is treated with Greenfield’s usual disdain for creating drama or suspense; the president for example just appears without any setup. Greenfield does try to cater to the genre demand for action, with Boxer getting in random fistfights, some of them comically egregious…like when he’s called a “commie” for ordering vodka in a redneck bar and beats up his accusers. Then later he gets in a scrape while defending his adopted son, Chuck, from a group of racists who attack Chuck and his black friend. 

Even the finale has the feel of a soap opera as Boxer “quits” the Navy so as to go after the abducted Francine, working with a former enemy named Bruno Morelli to track her down; another old enemy, Julio Sanchez, is behind her capture (not to mention that he’s also Francine’s former boyfriend, in a confusingly unelaborated subplot). As mentioned Francine’s rescued, but in a vegetable state, and novel’s end sees Boxer commanding another sub while racing out to find out what happened to his normal sub, which has disappeared on the assignment Boxer turned down prior to quitting the Navy. 

The climax is a retread of the previous volume, with Boxer depositing a squad of SEALs somewhere and our hero standing around while newly-introduced characters handle the action. Greenfield’s action scenes are so half-assed, there’s one part where a SEAL blows away some enemy soldiers in revenge for killing a comrade, and the guy screams “Die, motherfuckers, die.” Greenfield doesn’t even give the line of dialog an exclamation point! I mean even his cipher-like characters are bored with it all. 

As usual we end here on the final scene, with the next volume inevitably picking up from this scene and then spending the rest of the narrative following up the various subplots Greenfield has introduced in Death Cruise. I’m missing that volume, as well as the volume after it, but you know what? I really don’t care. At this point I’m still just reading Depth Force to finish off the volumes I do have.

Duffy

Duffy, by Harry Joe Brown, Jr.

October, 1968  Dell Books

One of those movies that seems to be completely forgotten, Duffy was a caper film that tried to tap into the late ‘60s zeitgeist and starred James Coburn as the titular character. The only reason I ever heard of it was many years ago when I was into the work of Donald Cammell, who later wrote and directed Performance. I’ve still never seen Duffy, but now I’ve read the novelization – which was written by Harry Joe Brown Jr., who was the other writer of the script. 

So far as I can tell, this is the only writing credit for Brown, and also Duffy appeared to be his only movie. He died in 2005, and was born into “Hollywood Royalty.”  But man, having read this book I can see why he didn’t do any other movies. Duffy is a dud, even in book form…and I have the suspicion that Brown wrote the original script before Donald Cammell was brought in to rewrite it. Further, I suspect that, like Paradise Alley, this novelization is a reflection of the author’s original screenplay…I’ve browsed online for reviews of the film, and have found mentions of scenes that aren’t even in this novel, so I’m guessing this was stuff added by Cammell that did not exist in Harry Joe Brown Jr.’s draft of the script. 

Essentially the novel is a basic heist yarn, only very drawn out, and made relevant with a “groovy” Eurotrash vibe. It’s a lot like the film version of The Adventurers by Harold Robbins, only without the saucy stuff. It’s short, too, coming in at 140 big-print pages. This is because there isn’t much story. Basically it’s about two half-brothers who decide to rip off their mega-wealthy father, and Duffy is an American expat they go to for help in the caper. There’s also a hotstuff American girl named Segolene who gets caught up in the mix. But it takes forever for anything to happen, and when it does, it’s not very memorable. 

One thing the novel seems to make clear that the movie might not is that the characters are all European, save for Duffy and Segolene…but then the latter is presented as one of those annoying American girls who goes overseas and starts acting “continental,” with a fake accent and etc. Plus her name is confusing; you’d never guess she was an American. The mega-wealthy father being heisted is named Calvet, an Onassis-type who was played by James Mason in the film (where he was renamed “Calvert”). The plotting half-brothers are Stefan, Calvet’s 20 year-old French son, and Anthony, Calvet’s half-British son of a previous marriage. The gist is that Stefan, as Calvet’s “main” son, has all the family wealth, whereas Anthony, as the “former” son, has nothing and must work. The two men hatch a scheme to heist Calvet’s ship, The Osiris, which will be hosting “currency transfers” around Tangier. Anthony needs the money because he has none, and Stefan wants to pull a heist just for the fun of it. 

It's through Stefan that we get most of those “groovy” period details. He likes to smoke joints and is prone to spouting New Age hippie philosophy, like how time is meaningless and whatnot. His girlfriend is blonde American model Segolene, but Segolene is a free spirit and not truly attached to him. This is another of those topical details, but the problem is Brown makes Segolene seem more like a narcisstic whore than a free-spirited, free-thinking woman. But then, perhaps that was precisely Brown’s intent. Susannah York played her in the movie, while future Performance co-star James Fox played “Stefane,” indicating that another name was changed from Brown’s original script. John Alderton played Anthony. 

Duffy meanwhile is described as a beach bum in his thirties, a former Navy man, who now makes his living as an artist in Tangier. Reviews of the movie have it that his pad in Tangier is decorated with tacky sculptures of the female anatomy, but none of this is present in the novelization. Rather, Duffy is a cipher with no real motivation…perhaps more commentary on the hippie mindset, for Duffy is clearly identified as a hippie. Dell Books was very intent on getting this across, with a headline announcing “Take a trip” on the first page of the book. Otherwise Duffy’s hippie-ism is mainly evident in how he has no real life intentions, other than lazing in Tangier and creating art. He doesn’t even display much of a libido. 

Brown is in no hurry to tell his tale. None whatsoever. There’s also no real drive to the heist. The two brothers want to hit their father’s ship, and go about their leisurely plotting of the job. Brown’s also in no hurry to introduce Duffy, who doesn’t even appear in the narrative until page 33. Here we are told he’s 32, with sandy brown hair and “Bogart-ish” looks. Duffy previously worked for Calvet, thus the brothers know of him, and ultimately they hit upon the idea of using him in the heist. Even the way Stefan and Anthony bring Duffy into the caper is lame; they essentially hang out with him for a bit and get into a “daydream” discussion about hitting a boat in the ocean and stealing four million bucks off it, and how such a job could be done. 

In the meantime there’s a lot of stuff with Segolene, who is more annoying than arousing, at least in the book. Stefan sort of puts her on Duffy, as a honey trap I guess, but even here it’s just more “hip” dialog, like her admission that “Stefan calls me a whore. I guess I am a whore.” How shocking! It takes a while, but Segolene does eventually give in to Duffy’s virility: “Slowly, fully, she let him enter her.” A clever thing here is how after their initial boink, there’s a part where Duffy and Segolene awake in bed and Duffy muses how, in books, sex scenes are often glossed over, with the author jumping immediately to the post-sex material…which is exactly what Brown does in Duffy. I thought this was funny, particularly given how I always note in my reviews if the sex scenes are off-page; Harry Joe Brown Jr. was noting the same thing in 1968, it appears. 

But Duffy’s still a bit of a square; when he wakes up next morning to find Stefan and Anthony standing over the bed, Duffy feels uncomfortable, given the fact that the two clearly know that Duffy’s been having sex with Segolene, ie Stefan’s “woman.” But man, it’s the late ‘60s! Get with it! And plus, as Segolene insists, she belongs to no one. In other words, she’s a “slut,” as Duffy calls her shortly before their sex scene. Now that’s how you get a woman! Anyway, at this point Duffy is as expected in on the heist, which sees him disguised as a Bedouin and the two brothers also disguised as they board their father’s ship and then rob it with “Israeli submachine guns,” clearly Uzis, though Brown never identifies them. 

The heist is bloodless and more on a suspense angle, but only takes up several pages and really isn’t much to get hung up about. Indeed, it’s the post-heist material that takes us into the climax, with a “shock twist” reveal that one of the plotters is actually working with Calvet…for reasons that aren’t even made clear. But Duffy gets the last laugh; having figured out the duplicity, he “finds” the money that’s been heisted and returns it in a public setting, ensuring plenty of media coverage and making himself look like a hero. It’s a clever ending, only undone by the fact that Duffy hasn’t done anything clever before this. 

All told, Duffy wasn’t so much a “trip” as it was a “bore.” I doubt I’ll ever see the film now, and if I want some Donald Cammell material I’ll just watch Performance again…or The Touchables, if I’m really desperate. That one’s only slightly better than Duffy, but at least has a super-mod look and features a cast of smokin’ hot swingin’ ‘60s babes.