DIRTY HARRY #9: THE KILLING CONNECTION by Dane Hartman
Ever since the first book in the Dirty Harry series – which was commissioned by Warner Bros. when they thought they might not be able to get Clint Eastwood to return for any further Dirty Harry movies (he ended up making two more – started with the line “Boopsie’s head exploded,” I’ve made it a point to share the first line of all of the books in my write-ups... even though none of the other ones have come close to the awesomeness of “Boopsie’s head exploded.” The first line in the ninth book of the series is, “Everything looked fine until the girls kissed.” Which gives away the fact that the book deals heavily with gay rights and anti-gay prejudice. The girls in question are Kim Byrnes and Lisa Patterson, and they’re making their way to their separate homes after an evening out together.
When they part, they say they love each other, and we’ll come for find out that they have been in a relationship for two years. When Kim is left alone in her apartment, she’s attacked by a male assailant who drops homophobic slurs while assaulting her... but when the assault has ended, Kim reveals that she is working with the man, who is supposed to attack and kill Lisa while she’s walking home through a nearby park. And so the man does, with Kim’s help, and then dumps her corpse into a pit of bodies they have been leaving in the park for a while now. Despite all the time Kim spent with Lisa, Kim is also part of a serial killer duo with an anti-gay agenda. And it’s time for Inspector "Dirty" Harry Callahan to take them down.
Harry gets involved with the murder investigation when the body pit is uncovered by a rain storm – and he only reports to the scene after we’re treated to a chapter of Harry participating in a destructive shootout involving a hitman in a produce market. When Lisa’s body is found, Kim, battered from the assault she actually didn’t mind so much, steps forward and confirms they were close friends. So Harry thinks he’ll be able to count on her help during the investigation... and gradually becomes closer to her than the reader would advise.
There’s not much time for love, however, because The Killing Connection has to make room for a number of action sequences. Beyond the opening assault and murder and the produce market ordeal, Harry is confronted in a bar, gets an army of members of the San Francisco Association for Full Equality coming after him, finds himself in the middle of a shootout in a cliff-side trailer park, has another shootout in an empty theater, crawls through a sewer or two, and, of course, has to have a climactic confrontation with the murderers. Every step of the way, he’s caught in the middle between the helpful Lieutenant Al Bressler (a character who was in the movies Dirty Harry and The Enforcer before making his way into these books) and the antagonistic Captain Winston McKay (who was in The Enforcer, but his first name was Jerome there), with McKay doing his best to bumble the investigation and make it more dangerous and complicated. Kim is also subtly pulling the strings to make things more difficult and dangerous for Harry.
The opening assault scene in this book is reminiscent of an assault that took place in the opening of an earlier Dirty Harry book, The Long Death, so it’s fitting that a character from that book also returns to give Harry some assistance: Sergeant Lynne McConnell of the vice squad. In the chapter where McConnell makes her first appearance, it’s noted that Harry doesn’t want to put McConnell in the line of fire again. “Especially since he almost lost her last time.” So yes, of course, she does end up in the line of fire again. More than once.
The Killing Connection was an interesting, action-packed read, as all of these Dirty Harry books have been so far.
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