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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Welcome Return from 1969, January 22, 2006
The punks can barely be told apart, except for the one who's enormously fat that kids tease him and call him a can of Crisco, and then there's the obligatory punk hero who's so smart he could debate Nietzsche to a draw. The others are pretty nondescript, one of them is allegedly Hispanic but you couldn't prove it by me. These punks go gay bashing and blind a man right in front of Paula Halstead, the beautiful wife of our professor hero. Paula is spotted by the brilliant punk and then becomes a target.
Editor Otto Penzler says that Gores' novel is fascinating in that the street language used by the punks is pretty clean, that today's widespread obscenity hadn't yet infiltrated to street gangs. The characters use a lot of vulgar euphemisms, but the worst they actually say is "so and so has a hard on against you," which if you believe Penzler would have been shocking in the 1960s. The novel is really all about sexual politics and the way in which punks commit rape to silence women.
The first victim, after being raped, kills herself for the shame and the stain leave her unable to face living. Another victim, a young girl of 18 or so, is treated by psychiatrists after being raped many times on a filthy mattress. However her best prognosis is that her life is basically over, and the next man who becomes her lover will receive a "hatpin in the chest." As though rape has made her into a psychopath.
This would make a good, strong movie if the right director took over the reins, and found a way to distinguish the young villains from one another.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Minor Crime Classic, November 10, 2005
This was Joe Gores' first published book (he had previously worked writing biographies of generals for the military -- ! -- and as a PI in S.F. for 12 years), but he was 38 when it came out, which may explain its antipathy to youth.
It's in the same genre as "Death Wish", "Straw Dogs", "Last House on the Left", etc. A professor who has a secret past as an SAS commando seeks revenge from some punks for the death of his wife. He's somewhat ambivalent about his wife in the first place, which robs the revenge tale of some of its urgency but makes it perhaps more realistic. What makes the book a bit dated is its somewhat bizarre sexual politics that feel very much of the era, or maybe even slightly earlier. Still, it's a fast, fun, suspenseful read. Crime fiction completists won't want to miss it, and everybody else will enjoy it too. I liked it slightly less than "Interface," which Gores wrote a couple of years later.
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6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Clockwork Orange meets Hammett, February 26, 2005
Thirty-six years old Paula Halstead met Rockwell on the bus because both of them were holding brochures to the opening of the San Francisco Spring Opera. At the Greyhound Station, she waits for her spouse Curt to arrive while Rockwell walks towards a car. A gang of four drunken teens on a lark viciously attack the blond. Paula pleads with them to stop, but they don't until Curt arrives. They flee the scene, but leave behind a blinded victim; Paula pukes up her guts at the horrific sight.
Rick Dean realizes Paula could identify him and his associates. They learn she is the wife of Los Feliz University anthropology Professor Curtis Halstead. The quartet plan to insure she says nothing so they obtain her home address and pay a visit. They viciously beat her, threaten her, and rape her. When they leave, unable to cope she slashes her wrists.
The cops fail him so Curt knows he must find, torture, and execute the four punks who destroyed his life. He hires a PI who meets with no success either. Curt concludes he must descend to the underbelly of society to confront the killers on their terms, which he obsessively is determined to do.
This is a reprint of an award winning 1969 tale that holds up quite nicely though feels like a historical. The story line is character driven whether it is Rick, Curt or Paula, but within an action-packed dark plot. The then rookie Joe Gores showcased a pessimistic San Franciscan society with his no SF elements version of Clockwork Orange meets Hammett.
Harriet Klausner
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