DIRTY HARRY #2: DEATH ON THE DOCKS by Dane Hartman
Clint Eastwood said he was done playing San Francisco-based Inspector "Dirty" Harry Callahan after the third film in the franchise, The Enforcer, which was released in 1976. Wanting to find some way to cash in on the film series, Warner Bros. brought Dirty Harry back in a series of books, with Ric Meyers and Leslie Alan Horvitz writing twelve books under the pen name Dane Hartman. These books were published from August of 1981 through March of 1983 – then came to an end because Eastwood agreed to come back for a fourth Dirty Harry movie, Sudden Impact, which was released in 1983. (And then he returned again for The Dead Pool, released in 1988.) I started off this year by reading the first book in the Dirty Harry series, Duel for Cannons, and now I’ve made my way through the second book, Death on the Docks.
Duel for Cannons was a tough act to follow, and it was clear that it was going to be as soon as I read the first line: “Boopsie’s head exploded.” Death on the Docks doesn’t even attempt to top that, getting started in a much more low-key fashion. The first line in this one is, “It was way past midnight when the blue Dodge convertible belonging to Bernard Tuber pulled into his driveway.” Not exactly exciting. But don’t worry about this second book holding back on the action and violence, because by the end of the prologue Bernard Tuber, his bodyguard, his wife, and the two Tuber children (ages 6 and 3) will have been executed by assassins. Just like in Duel for Cannons, the violent acts are described in bloody detail. Bodies are blown open by shotgun blasts, a head explodes (again), a skull is fractured. It’s like Meyers and Horvitz were told to make these books as violent as possible and pack them with descriptions of gore that never could have made it to the screen if the books became movies.
The Tuber murders take place in the city of Palo Alto, which is outside of Dirty Harry’s jurisdiction, but Lieutenant Bressler (who was featured in the films Dirty Harry and The Enforcer) of the SFPD decides to loan Callahan out to Palo Alto so he can help solve the case. For Harry, it’s obvious from the start who had Tuber and his family killed. Bernard Tuber was in the running to become president of a local chapter of the Brotherhood of Longshoremen, so of course the retiring president, Matthew Braxton, had him killed so he wouldn’t be around to oppose Braxton’s chosen successor John “Bull” Ryan. Don’t expect any twists or turns in this story. Harry has solved the case by the end of the first chapter, the rest of the book is all about him trying to prove that he’s correct so he can bring Braxton and Ryan to justice.
Braxton is a union president, but he lives and operates like a powerful mob boss, and he has plenty of henchmen and corrupt people to throw in Harry’s way. This means we never go too long without some kind of action sequence breaking out, whether that involves Harry facing off with assassins, getting his apartment peppered with shots from silenced guns (a sequence reminiscent of something that happens in John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13), finding himself in the middle of a dock riot, or being lured into a trap by a corrupt cop. The first book in this series had Harry going on a trip to San Antonio, Texas, and this Braxton case also causes him to have to leave California, ending up on an island in the Caribbean... where some major gunfights play out.
I didn’t enjoy Death on the Docks quite as much as I enjoyed Duel for Cannons and I couldn’t envision this one being a movie quite as clearly as I could envision a Duel for Cannons movie when I read it, but it was an entertaining read that delivered plenty of bloody action and tough guy heroics. I don’t think any Dirty Harry fan would be disappointed with this one.
It’s worth noting that Bressler isn’t the only returning supporting character from the film series, as Death on the Docks also features an appearance by Frank De Georgio (from Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, and The Enforcer). Sunny, Harry’s neighbor / love interest in Magnum Force, also sort of returns in this book, but for some reason the author(s) decided to call her Keiko rather than Sunny.
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