Books: Backtrack By Joseph Hansen (1982)

"Did handsome, charming Eric Tarr, small-time actor, really kill himself? He left behind a lot of wreckage broken promises, broken hearts, broken lives. Backtracking through his father's past, young Alan, another of the betrayed, begins to see how many men and women might have been bitter enough to murder Eric Tarr. By the time Alan learns the truth, it becomes his own personal tragedy and, both legs in casts, he waits helpless in a storm-shaken deserted house on the beach for his father's killer to find and kill him too.”

While published in 1982, Backtrack feels like more like a tale set in the 1950s, with reminders of Hansen’s scathing look at Hollywood, Los Angeles, and gay life. Like his Dave Brandsetter tales, young Alan Tarr is smarter than everyone else when he decides to venture to Los Angeles for his father’s funeral –a father that left him and his mother at 6 months and never returned. It’s a nebulous reason, but for Alan, he needs to find some tangible reason to get there. But Alan arrives to late (a misadventure involving hitchhiking -a very 60’s and 70s thing- and a boy-ish looking girl named Gus prevents it. But soon, after talking to a few people, including the cops, Alan becomes convinced his father’s death was more than it seemed, and Alan ventures around the dark underbelly of Los Angeles to find a truth –one he’s disgusted to learn, but none the less seems attracted to as well.

There are some memorable characters here, fully realized, with Hansen’s patent prose style of not letting words go to waste. These books may be short, but there are not many writers who can evoke mood and setting with without filler –so every word does count. But like a few of his Brandstetter tales, the plot is a bit over the top, and melodramatic for no good reason, along with a few characters that flip-flop on their sexuality like they’re turning on a light switch.

Like a lot of books of this genre, it also comes off as dated and I sometimes cringed at causal racist and homophobic language. I understand this was what Hansen grew up with, but it’s also a reminder that while he can laser focus his eye on the lurid aspect of Hollywood, he could not give up the internal homophobia he might’ve had (after all, he was gay, but was married to a woman –who was a lesbian- from 1943 until her death in 1994. They also had a child).

In the end, it was a page turner. But your mileage will vary.

Books: The Busy Body By Donald E. Westlake (1966)

“The corpse isn’t anybody special—a low-level drug courier—but it has been so long since the organization’s last grand funeral that Nick Rovito decides to give the departed a big send-off. He pays for a huge church, a procession of Cadillacs, and an ocean of flowers, and enjoys the affair until he learns the dead man is going to his grave wearing the blue suit. Rovito summons Engel, his right-hand man, and tells him to get a shovel. Inside the lining of the blue suit jacket is $250,000 worth of uncut heroin, smuggled back from Baltimore the day the courier died. When Engel’s shovel strikes coffin, he braces himself for the encounter with the dead man. But the coffin is empty, the heroin gone, and Engel has no choice but to track down the missing body or face his boss’s wrath.” 

Like a lot of Westlake’s stories –both the serious noir and the caper comedies- it eventually becomes a detective novel, as much as anything else. And Westlake’s specialty is that they’re written frequently from the criminal’s point of view. While Al Engel may not be hardened crime lord, he works for them, so he becomes guilty by association.

The Busy Body –one of his earliest in the “nephew” genre he created- borrows themes from The Fugitive Pigeon, which I mentioned in my take on that book, had been Westlake’s first really big seller for Random House, and which ironically, outsold the Parker novels by a 2 to 1 margin. Here the tale is bit tighter, the humor less forced, but it’s still a bit weak. The plot is still a bit complex, built like a detective novel with Engel trying to find a body, please his boss Nick, and running into more complications than he ever dreamed of –including, eventually, being sought for murder by Nick’s goons and the hapless police.

I don’t really love the book, mostly because all the characters are just reworked clichés. None appear to have a soul, or any real empathy (much like the characters in his Richard Stark written Parker novels). Even Engel comes off a bit cold in the end –but there is a part of me that understands him when it comes to his relationship with his mother. I could see him escaping to California to get away from her.

There was a film version of this book released in 1967, produced and directed by William Castle, a well know filmmaker who churned out a few competent B-movies quickly and on budget. This led him to independently produce and direct thrillers, which, despite their low budgets, were effectively promoted by using gimmicks, such as 3D. He was also the producer for Rosemary's Baby. It featured Richard Pryor's film debut, but I hear it's horrible.

Books: How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix (2023)

“When Louise finds out her parents have died, she dreads going home. She doesn’t want to leave her daughter with her ex and fly to Charleston. She doesn’t want to deal with her family home, stuffed to the rafters with the remnants of her father’s academic career and her mother’s lifelong obsession with puppets and dolls. She doesn’t want to learn how to live without the two people who knew and loved her best in the world. Most of all, she doesn’t want to deal with her brother, Mark, who never left their hometown, gets fired from one job after another, and resents her success. Unfortunately, she’ll need his help to get the house ready for sale because it’ll take more than some new paint on the walls and clearing out a lifetime of memories to get this place on the market. But some houses don’t want to be sold, and their home has other plans for both of them.”

As someone put this, How to Sell a Haunted House is like Annabelle meets Child’s Play, mixed with a wonderfully Southern dysfunctional family drama. It’s also about dark secrets our family –both intimate and extended- keeps. Ones we sadly pass down from one generation to the next. Where Hendrix’s previous work was bit homage’s to growing up in the 80s and 90s, this is a bit more mature work, but still filled with his perfect dark sense of humor. I mean, I guess, less campy, even if he treads familiar ground with possessed dolls.

It’s not a perfect novel, as it takes forever to get going and it takes a lot to really like Louise and Mark –even when I see some my own sibling rivalry in their relationship. They’re both rather horrible people, but I can understand Louise’s choice to leave Charleston and move to San Francisco. She’s escaping her family’s problems with hopes of starting fresh. Still, at times Mark and her relationship is a bit soap opera-ish and some of the dialogue about modern parenting is reminder that while I may not have the most perfect mother, she never worried about explain to us concepts like death and being a consistent parent. And Aunt Honey easily gives up the dark tale of the family after keeping it buried for sixty-eight years.

I can’t hate it, as it was silly fun, and Hendrix appears to maturing as writer of Southern Gothic Horror, but like his previous tomes, it stumbles here and there and never becomes a home run you think it should