Cody continues reading the Dirty Harry novel series.
DIRTY HARRY #5: FAMILY SKELETONS by Dane Hartman
As I read my way through the series of Dirty Harry novels that were ordered by Warner Bros. when it looked like Clint Eastwood was walking away from the Dirty Harry film franchise after three movies (he would later return for two more sequels), I try to figure out which author wrote which book. The name on the front of each one is Dane Hartman, but that was a shared pseudonym for two different people: Ric Meyers and Leslie Alan Horvitz... and five books in, I have to admit, these writers are really keeping me guessing. They have done a good job of mixing their styles together, because I can’t say sure if one book was written by one person and the next by another person. I thought the first two books, Duel for Cannons and Death on the Docks, were different from the next two books, The Long Death and The Mexico Kill, but as of the fifth book, I’m no longer sure. There are times when Family Skeletons seems more like the first two books and times when it seems like the second two... especially when the author drops in references to horror movies.
While the first two books had over-the-top descriptions of violent acts that brought to mind the special effects work of Tom Savini, it wasn’t until The Long Death that direct references to horror movies like Halloween, Friday the 13th, Mother’s Day, and Deep Red were dropped in there – which leads me to believe the writer of that book might be Ric Meyers, since he wrote for magazines like Fangoria and Famous Monsters of Filmland. Whoever wrote The Long Death, I suspect they wrote Family Skeletons as well, because the horror references are back. The Manitou gets a nod in dialogue, the Exorcist theme “Tubular Bells” is mentioned, and a character goes to see Just Before Dawn on the big screen. Unfortunately, the references to Just Before Dawn are negative... and incorrect, given that it’s said that the killer in the film is a “raving lunatic.” There is no raving killer in that movie!
But maybe the negative talk about a slasher movie is the author trying to be cheeky, because when you break Family Skeletons down, it’s basically a slasher story where the slashing is disrupted by “Dirty” Harry Callahan.
The story takes homicide inspector Harry out of his home base of San Francisco and sends him off to Boston (a city the author seems very familiar with, since there are passages that come off like a travelogue), where a cousin has summoned him because she fears her college student daughter has gotten mixed up with a questionable crowd and may be targeted by the knife-wielding killer that’s terrorizing the city. With some help from a local detective, Harry unearths connections to a cult called the Order of the Orenda, which has beliefs that might be leading members to make human sacrifices. There are a few slashings along the way, as well as the usual chases and shootouts you expect Harry to participate in. And when the case is solved, the explanation is right out of a slasher movie.
When Family Skeletons isn’t feeling like a slasher, it follows Harry through an interesting mystery that sometimes feels like it would have been right at home on one of the many cop TV shows. Then the .44 Magnum action breaks out to remind us this is definitely a Dirty Harry story. There’s even a great callback to Harry’s iconic “Do you feel lucky?” speech in a scene where he faces off with a relative’s abusive husband.
Family Skeletons has some racial references that wouldn’t be written in this way nowadays, but it’s an entertaining read. And since I usually mention the first lines of this books, I’ll say that this one starts with the line, “Judy’s parents had always thought it would be Arlene who got into trouble.” So that opening line of Duel for Cannons, “Boopsie’s head exploded,” is still by far the best opening line of the whole series.
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