Sacred Monster [Hardcover]

Donald E. Westlake (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1989

Sacred Monster: A Comedy Of Madness by Westlake, Donald E.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Prolific Westlake displays yet again the originality that won him an Edgar Award for God Save the Mark and praise for books ranging from deadly thrillers through boffo comics. This novel is organized as a series of film flashbacks and forwards, with movie star Jack Pine speaking to an interviewer, Michael O'Connor. Stoned on drugs, Pine describes how his lifelong friend, Buddy Pal, helped him rise from lean beginnings to the top in Hollywood. A foreboding air pervades the recital of Pine's shameful past; though a habitual user of people, he remains unaware that Pal is using him. Sensing the character's moral rot, the reader is nevertheless seduced by the secrets spilling from Pine's unguarded tongue. Even with prescience, we are floored by the author's ingenious revelation of what happened and by the ultimate impact of O'Connor's role as a interviewer.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In his own inimitable comic style, full of wit, black humor, and grand gesture, Westlake limns the life of Jack Pine, fabulously wealthy but drug-hazed and slightly mad movie star. As the plot progresses (depending on the current clarity or cloudiness of his mind), Jack delivers a series of carefully orchestrated flashbacks to an interviewer revelatory of his acting career, ex-wives, paternity suits, and ubiquitous best friend/sponge Buddy Pal. The scenes twist bitterly into the present, and the true reasons for the drugs and the interview become clear. Fun and chuckles until the darkly humorous, surprising conclusion to this mystery.-- REK
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 231 pages
• Publisher: Mysterious Press; 1st edition (May 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0892961775
• ISBN-13: 978-0892961771
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,676,826 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Sacred Monster Intrigues, Irritates, June 30, 2009

By 

Loren Eaton - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sacred Monster (Mass Market Paperback)

When an author tries something new, fans often react with equal parts anticipation and fear. This is doubly true when said author has a track list as long as your arm. Take Donald Westlake, who managed to pen over a hundred novels in his lifetime. Readers knew to expect slapstick crime stories when they opened a Westlake book or harder-than-cement-shoes hardboiled when he went under the pseudonym Richard Stark. So what must have gone through their heads when Sacred Monster showed up in the late eighties? It wasn't a light-hearted caper or a tough P.I. tale. It was something altogether different, namely a Hollywood satire.

Oscar-winning actor Jack Pine doesn't know why he agreed to do an interview on this of all mornings. He's coming down off a bender so enormous he can't even remember the past twenty-four hours, and his hangover is pounding him so hard it feels as though a thousand elephants are tap dancing on his cerebellum. Plus, this interviewer -- whatshisname and whereshefrom, oh, never mind, it hurts to think -- wants to know everything, from all about his best friend (childhood chum Buddy Pal) to the first girl he slept with (high-school vixen Wendy), from the ins and outs of his entire career (down and up and down again) to the details of his three spectacularly failed marriages (to Marcia, Lorraine and Dori). And Jack's having a hard time dredging memory's depths, because every now and again those chemicals in his bloodstream click just so and he drops over unconscious. But as the interview goes on, one thing becomes clear. Jack Pine is hiding a dark secret from everyone -- including himself.

As you might have guessed, Sacred Monster doesn't stray too far from Westlake's preferred genre, even though you have to get pretty far in before a mystery starts to emerge. A big clue pops up in the first chapter, then the book loses itself in poking fun at the idiocies of Hollywood excess. Good sport, that, and the slow insinuation of an old horror at around the midpoint intrigues. But the ending squashes the entire enterprise flatter than a lazy frog on a railroad track. Think of one of those implausible and irritating summer-movie twists, and you won't be far off. Not to say the novel's a terrible read. With his winning style and stupendous sense of humor, Westlake would've had a hard time writing one of those. On the scale of quality, Sacred Monster falls somewhere in the middle, neither reaching for the heavens nor plunging into the abyss.