Books: The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix (2020)

"Patricia Campbell had always planned for a big life, but after giving up her career as a nurse to marry an ambitious doctor and become a mother, Patricia's life has never felt smaller. The days are long, her kids are ungrateful, her husband is distant, and her to-do list is never really done. The one thing she has to look forward to is her book club, a group of Charleston mothers united only by their love for true-crime and suspenseful fiction. In these meetings, they're more likely to discuss the FBI's recent siege of Waco as much as the ups and downs of marriage and motherhood. But when an artistic and sensitive stranger moves into the neighborhood, the book club's meetings turn into speculation about the newcomer. Patricia is initially attracted to him, but when some local children go missing, she starts to suspect the newcomer is involved. She begins her own investigation, assuming that he's a Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy. What she uncovers is far more terrifying, and soon she--and her book club--are the only people standing between the monster they've invited into their homes and their unsuspecting community"

Most of the appeal of Grady Hendrix’s The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires is the juxtaposition of mundanities of suburban life (which has its own sort of dark secrets) with the evilness that has come to town. There is also a bit of poking fun at Southern values, as it tries to walk a tightrope between being a horror tale and trying to appeal to folks who have seen modern movies set in the South, like Steel Magnolias and Fried Green Tomatoes. Also, this tale is set in Charleston, South Carolina, and begins five years after the events of Hendrix’s last book, My Best Friend’s Exorcism, but is not a sequel to that novel.

I suspect that Hendrix, who seemly wants to be a Southern version of Stephen King, is setting his tales in and around the same area where he grew up because it helps create a certain continuity and points out that while small towns can have secrets (an overused, but effective cliché), it can draw unspeakable supernatural evil.

What exactly is James Harris is never fully addressed, though it seems to be a slight variation on creature King created for The Outsider, an eternal evil that seduces a town, feeds on it, sucking it dry and then moving on (though it’s not a shapeshifter). I’m not sure if Hendrix plans a sequel, though he sort of sets one up, as the creatures says he’s the only one -then mentions something called the Wide Smiles Club, who’ll come looking for him if he vanishes.

I did appreciate the subtle humor, the ongoing battle between the women on their roles in Southern hierarchy in age of the 1990s and feminism (though all the women are somewhat one-dimensional here), the names of their children (like Blue, Pony, Parish, the adult’s Slick and Horse), but like My Best Friend’s Exorcism, I found the book not fully being what I expected. The funny part, I think I was expecting more of a parody, I guess, than what I got.

However, it also pushes the white savior narrative, which in 2020 seems tasteless. I mean, Mrs. Greene is your typical stereotype black woman, one who knows a lot about everything, but is never listened to because she’s black and a domestic. And it’s inventible she knows how to solve these white women problems, but that is mostly because she is black and the story demands it. Plus, the area she lives in is filled with kids and young adults who are seemly taken from every 1970s inner city, Blaxspotation film. In other words, what you would expect from a white, Southern writer, trying to create a history about black folks.

It’s not a bad book, but I do wonder if Grady Hendrix is writing these tales more for his Southern family and friends, than a wider audience. It has an appealing premise, and could work as a TV series, but I think they need to make the women less crass and crude, and make the humor a bit more ironic.

Books: The Road to Ruin By Donald E. Westlake (2004)

Chester Fallon –an old friend of Andy Kelp- used to work as a chauffeur for a man named Monroe Hall, who ran the energy company Somnitech, a conglomeration that also dabbled in other things like communications and manufacturing (its Westlake’s take on the Enron scandal). When it’s discovered that Hall has been caught embezzling from stock investors, depleting union pension funds, the company collapses and thousands of employees lose not only salaries, but their pensions. Now Monroe Hall is a virtual prisoner on his huge Pennsylvania compound as he awaits trial and Chester wants revenge –or at least some of the money of all cars that Hall stores on his land. But to get that, he needs help and calls Andy, who gets John Dortmunder, Tiny and Stan involved a caper to get those cars. But how will this happen, considering Hall’s compound is surrounded by hills, mountains, security and electrical fences?

Due to Hall’s company going bankrupt and due to the fact that he can’t keep staff because of his stealing ways, John and his team come up with an idea: They’ll get hired on as butler (Dortmunder), private secretary (Andy Kelp), security guard (Tiny Belcher), and chauffeur (Stan Murch) to Monroe Hall. But the problem of how to get the cars off the estate without anyone noticing gets further complicated by Mac, Buddy, and Ace, out to avenge the union losses, who plan to kidnap Monroe and demand ransom. Add bilked investors Mark Sterling and Oz Faulk, who also plan to kidnap Monroe until he gives them the password to his offshore bank account, and Dortmunder and the boys won’t have an easy time of it, even before Monroe’s personal trainer, irate at his employer for reasons best known to the IRS, joins forces with the union trio and the investors. Before Dortmunder and his gang can set their heist in action, Monroe and Dortmunder the butler are kidnapped. Oops, there’s also an assassin running loose. If you think he’s after Dortmunder, you’re almost right.

While not as funny as previous Dortmunder books, The Road to Ruin is still filled with Westlake’s trademark talent for observational humor, but it’s still a somewhat disjointed, sometimes rambling tale that might’ve worked as a short-story or just a shorter book (a ton of subplots could've been excised or shorted, and I found the last minute addition of an assassin odd and pointless, though I'm curious if this plot point and Lieutenant Orville will pop up in later books. Still Westlake's Dortmunder tales are somewhat episodic, with everything wrapped up in the end, so I'll see). I’ve noticed that these last few Dortmunder titles are seemly longer than the ones from the 1970s and early 1980s, and I can assume he was sort of asked to make them longer by his publisher, if only to justify the hardcover price tag. But writing comedy has always been hard, but writing a long comedy –especially one like this, which has a very elaborate premise and a lot of characters- seems harder. With so much going on, with so many plot threads to weave, the eleventh Dortmunder tale is not as fun or satisfying as the earlier tales.

Also: Most of the Dortmunder books usually had three to five year gaps between releases (though there was as little as two for the early titles). Starting with The Road to Ruin, which was released in 2004, Westlake began a run with the final four titles (including collection of short stories, Thieves’ Dozen, which also released in 2004, featuring Dortmunder), with book twelve released in 2005, book thirteen released in 2007, and book fourteen released posthumously in 2009.

Much like his return to writing Parker novels under the Richard Stark name, I wonder if Westlake sensed his time left on this mortal coil was close and he needed to push out as many books as possible before the strings were cut.

Jon Hamm Spearheading a Reboot of Fletch

It’s been 35 years since Fletch, an adaptation of the Gregory McDonald 1974 novel, was on the big screen and 31 years since its sequel, Fletch Lives was released. After several attempts to reboot the franchise over the last thirty years –one that includes writer/director Kevin Smith- Miramax and actor Jon Hamm have announced they’re finally going to take another stab at it. 

Zev Borow will write the screenplay, which is based on the second novel, 1976’s Confess, Fletch. Daytrippers, Superbad and Adventureland director Greg Mottola will helm the film.

Still, there has been a long and typically Hollywood, road to this reboot.

Universal Pictures released the first Fletch film in 1985, starring Chevy Chase and directed by Michael Ritchie (Downhill Racer, The Candidate, Semi-Tough, Bad News Bears). It grossed nearly $60 million on an $8 million budget. However, it was not a straight take on the novel, and Ritchie allowed Chase to ad-lib, but it was a critical and box office hit and allowed McDonald to write a few more books (including a spin-off series of four books featuring Flynn, who was introduced in second book). It took four years to get a sequel out, Fletch Lives, which again starred Chase and helmed by Ritchie. However, this 1989 film was an original story, and not based on any previous McDonald material. While the $8 million budget remained, the sequel was generally disliked by critics and made about $20 million less than the first film. Still, Universal was interested in a third film, eventually agreeing in the early 1990s to let Kevin Smith write and direct a follow up still starring Chase, but nothing came to fruition.  

 

By 2000, the rights to series were acquired by Miramax after Universal Pictures option ran out. Again, Smith was on the forefront to helm a film, with Chevy Chase still attached to play Fletch. However, a disagreement between the two about the priorities on the sequel project led Smith to work on adapting Fletch Won, a 1985 prequel McDonald wrote, and was set years before the first book, thus featuring a younger version of Fletch that probably would’ve starred frequent Smith collaborator Jason Lee or even Ben Affleck. Interestingly, McDonald wrote three prequels to the original 1974 novel, with Fletch Won being chronologically first, followed by Fletch, Too in 1986 and Fletch and the Widow Bradley, which came out in 1981.

Smith would struggle getting the film greenlit, as former Miramax studio head Harvey Weinstein was not convinced Jason Lee could launch a successful film series. Over the years, Smith considered other actors to play Fletch, such as Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck (again), Jimmy Fallon and even Scrubs star Zach Braff. Eventually, Smith left the project in late 2005. After Smith dropped out, Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence was hired to helm Fletch Won and a sequel, but by 2007 it became obvious nothing was going to come out of it. While Braff was never officially attached to the project, he eventually dropped out to work on his own films and Lawrence soon followed. 

The next attempt came in 2011, when Warner Brothers acquired the rights. After several attempts by several writers to get a suitable script, the WB put the IP on ice until 2013 when David List, who represented the Estate of Gregory McDonald, stepped up with his own draft that even gotten former SNL actor Jason Sudeikies interested in the title role. The studio signed off on List’s script and the search began for a director, but by early 2015, the film had moved to Relativity Studios after Warner Bros. passed on the project –then in 2018 Relativity Media had gone bankrupt.

Miramax, once again, has gotten the rights back and is now setting up a potential new film series being spearheaded and starring Jon Hamm as Fletch. Whether this latest attempt actually gets made will be the question. Hamm is a bankable star, though mainly known for his dramatic TV work. However, with the right material, he’s also a very good comedic actor –his work on Tina Fey’s 30 Rock and Kimmy Schmidt proves that. But with so many fits and starts, with an ongoing pandemic,  a new Fletch film is at least two years or more away.