Harry: Death on the DocksDane Hartman
New English Library 1982
This is the second in the Dirty Harry continuation series - I've managed to pick up the remaining five books published in the UK this week - and after enjoying Duel for Cannons I was a bit disappointed in this one.
The problem was that although I'm not averse to violence in a book I felt this one went too far in places and served no purpose other than to shock. It's as if the writer thought that the attraction of the Dirty Harry character was the extreme violence but then none of the movies would have dared go as far as the scenes in the prologue to this novel. It starts off fine with a union sanctioned hit but then it goes way over the top and reads like a splatterpunk horror novel.
The plot is very slim and the latter sections (and I must confess I felt it a strain to get to the end of this one) of the book which sends Harry into James Bond territory just didn't work for me. The Dirty Harry is this novel is certainly not Eastwood's Harry. Still I'm glad I've managed to get all six of these UK editions (the series ran to twelve books in the US) as I'm a huge Eastwood fan and they add to my collection.
4 comments:
You want shocking violence? Wait until you get to book 5, "Family Skeletons." It isn't pretty...
CK - I don't so much mind the violence if the story needs it but the killing of the family at the start was almost pornographic
Believe me, book 5 is gratuitous.
I'm quite fond of the first four books in this series and wasn't aware of their existence until two years ago, when I watched the DH films again after many years and started looking for things online. Your postings here have inspired me to once again give them a look.
I absolutely love this blog and its a pleasure reading, as always. And thanks to you, I've started on Westlake's "Parker" books, too!
Parker is brilliant - I'm actually just discovering Westlake's Dortmunder. Different to Parker but the same kind of world.
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