Dead Run

Dead Run, by Jonathan Black

October, 1981  Jove Books

So obscure there isn’t even a cover image online, Dead Run is presumably by the same Jonathan Black who turned out a series of paperback originals in the 1970s before finding more fame in the 1980s (in the UK, at least) with super-fat, super-long blockbusters like The World Rapers and The Carnage Merchants; as I mentioned in my review of The Ms. Squad #2, “Jonathan Black” was a pseudonym of prolific writer Bela von Block. 

Was this Jonathan Black that Jonathan Black? I have no way of knowing, and really, it doesn’t matter. Let’s just judge the book on its own merits. For one, we have here a serial killer novel. The particular type of victim this killer goes after is…joggers. Joggers in NYC. Jonathan Black, whether it was Bela von Block or not, has a theme and he’s sticking with it…Dead Run is so of its moment, capitalizing on the then-current fad of jogging, that you start to hate the joggers as much as the serial killer does. 

But then, perhaps that was Black’s intention. Dead Run is also curious because we have here a book where the author clearly hates every single one of his characters. There is this droll, eye-rolling tone to the narrative that makes it clear Black is “taking the piss” as the British would say, but ultimately it serves to make the book uninvolving. When even the author doesn’t give a shit about the characters he is killing off, why should the reader? 

Well anyway, Dead Run is also very much a New York novel. New York landmarks are mentioned, New York personalities are presented and dissected. We’re only talking Midtown-type people…trendy, affluent people who have given up cocktails to take up jogging, the big new fad that’s swept the city. Every single character in the novel has something to do with jogging, from the many victims of the killer to the ostensible “hero” of the book (I use quotes because the guy barely appears in the text), a former cop turned private eye – he too is pulled into jogging by a young woman who has her eye on him, despite being married. 

Oh, and that’s another thing. Jove Books as expected hypes up the sex quotient of the novel…but friends, there is none. Jonathan Black relishes in dangling the prospects of juicy a-doings, from the aforementioned young lady who just desperately wants to get laid by anyone who isn’t her husband, to the big movie star who is focused on her body, to the widow of one of the victims who keeps throwing herself at the ostensible hero…but nothing ever happens. Sex is always brushed off – the private eye in particular brushes off sexual advances, from both the widow and the horny married girl, to the point that the reader starts to get one of those “hmmmm” suspicions…especially given that the guy just wants to run home and give his dog a walk. 

I guess I should start using names for the characters to make this thing easier. Simon Larsen is the hero of the tale, a former NYC cop now barely making a living as a private investigator. The back cover has it that he’s brought in by the cops to crack the case, but that’s not really true – as usual I doubt the copy editors actually read the book. Instead, an old acquaintance named Ritalin who is still on the force (presumably he too later quit, to come up with a drug named after himself for hyperactive children) comes to Larsen to get an outsider’s view on the case…in other words, Larsen is strictly off the books, with no official involvement with the case. 

That is, until the sexy widow of the first victim comes to him and hires him, showing off her lush legs and basically telling him she wants to do him right there in his dingy office. Clearly Jonathan Black is catering to the private eye trope – the widow herself claiming as much – but our boy Simon fends off her advances, grudgingly takes her job, and gives his dog a walk. Hmmmm…. 

Black follows the formula of the standard mystery novel by given frequent chapters over to one-off characters who are about to become victims of the murderer. As mentioned Black’s distaste for these people is so palpable that the reader ends up siding with the killer; or then maybe Black is going for a dark comedy approach, which seems to be the case. It just gets old for 250-some pages of small, dense print. 

We have the guy who has become a devoted runner despite his wife’s distaste for the whole thing (ie the widow who later throws herself at Simon Larsen), the movie queen who jogs to keep her spectacular body in shape (truly a dark comedy scene, as she worries about a roll of fat beneath her chin – which is exactly what the killer’s attack dog latches onto when it mauls her to death), the young woman who signs up for the NYC race and who has the misfortune of being paired with…the killer himself, and so on. 

There are many other victims besides, and to his credit Black varies up the kills. The aforementioned dog attack is one avenue…the killer gets into the whole killing business by “accidentally” running a guy over while he’s jogging, then wondering if he did it on purpose, then realizing he enjoyed it. This is another of those novels where we know who the killer is from the start – a disaffected businessman who runs over the first victim on a whim, then realizes he wants to kill more of those goddamn joggers – but we are never given his name. He’s just never mentioned by name in his infrequent chapters. 

The mystery is more concerned with Simon Larsen figuring out who the killer is…that is, after pages and pages have been focused on Simon picking up jogging, at the behest of sexy young Katie – the horny married girl. As I say, Black’s distaste for his New York personalities is palpable; they’re all paper-thin, focused on the latest trendy thing; Katie wants to have an affair because she writes about them for her women’s magazine, and she’s always wanted to try one for herself, but she keeps striking out. 

The cops too are pugnacious, stupid, more prone to petty backstabbing than solving the case…and meanwhile the killer wracks up some impressive kills, often focusing on the various marathons that run through the city. And oh man. Tons and tons of narrative is given over to the discussion of these marathons, from organizing them to planning their routes…just so, so many characters involved in the jogging world, talking about jogging, thinking about jogging….just on and on and on. 

It’s one of those books where Simon owns a gun that he never carries, and besides he informs Katie he’s a “lousy shot.” So forget about action. Dead Run really is a mystery novel, one with a darkly droll sense of humor, given a “trendy jogging” overlay. 

So then a lot of the narrative is focused on those one-off characters, how they got into jogging, why they jog, going out for a jog…and getting killed by the murderer while jogging. There’s a very slow buildup as the cops and the people of New York slowly come to grasp that there is a “jogging killer” afoot (lame pun alert), and eventually the novel morphs into a procedural where Simon and the cops try to figure out who he is and stop him before he kills again…and meanwhile all these big marathons are being planned. 

It was curious reading Dead Run after the Boston Marathon bombing. The killer never achieves anything so drastic – once again fiction pales in comparison the horrors of reality, especially when radical Muslim terrorists are involved – but Black does manage to convey a sense of horror as the runners go about their race, oblivious that a killer is among them. That said, even here the victims are treated with tongue firmly in cheek, like the guy who finally succumbs to taking a drink from the water stand as he staggers by it, thirsty from running…and ends up drinking water that has been fatally spiked by the killer. 

Jonathan Black as expected centers everything around jogging in the finale: the big NYC marathon, Simon running it with Katie, on the lookout for the killer. At least his gun makes an appearance, but the finale is pretty anticlimactic (spoiler alert: Simon shoots the killer, the killer dies, that’s it). Oh and at the end Black has Katie casually reveal she’s filed for a divorce and now Simon had better give her some good lovin’! 

Overall Dead Run was fun for a peek at a lost Manhattan – like a lot of novels of its day, it manages to bring to life that lost era of the city, with the caveat that Black’s characters are too highfalutin to hang out in the seedier areas of New York – but overall the droll narrative tone lets the project down. Not to mention the hero who somehow manages to fend off the advances of two sexy women…hmmm….