DIRTY HARRY #7: MASSACRE AT RUSSIAN RIVER by Dane Hartman
Iconic action hero “Dirty” Harry Callahan, who was played by Clint Eastwood in five feature films released through the ‘70s and ‘80s, is an Inspector with the San Francisco Police Department – but in the tie-in books written by author Dane Hartman (a shared pseudonym used by writers Ric Meyers and Leslie Alan Horvitz), he often finds himself working outside of San Francisco. That’s the case with the seventh novel in the twelve book series, Massacre at Russian River – which, as the title gives away, takes place in a small town called Russian River. The opening line of the book lets us know, “North of San Francisco, Highway 101 runs through Marin, Sonoma, Mendocino, Humboldt, and Del Norte counties straight into Oregon.” And Russian River is a California town somewhere around Mendocino and Humboldt. The growing and harvesting of marijuana is big business in Russian River... and since this book was published in June of 1982, marijuana was thoroughly illegal at the time and authorities were going to great lengths to put its farmers out of business. That endeavor is at the core of Massacre at Russian River, where a task force led my John “Turk” Raven is looking to eradicate marijuana – and when marijuana farmers start turning up murdered, it appears to Turk that a “drug war” has erupted in the area. So a call is made to San Francisco and Harry Callahan is set to Russian River to figure out exactly what’s going on.
This isn’t a straightforward murder investigation, because Harry is also expected to accompany Turk and his team on their farm raids – and his association with the team gets off to a bumpy start when their reconnaissance helicopter is shot out of the sky with Harry on board. It soon becomes clear that there’s some kind of conspiracy at work here, and nearly everyone in Russian River seems to be up to some kind of shady business. It could be that the only people Harry can trust are Turk and Turk’s sort-of girlfriend, a twenty-something local girl named Elsie Cranston. Who Harry also decided to go ahead and sleep with while he’s in Russian River.
The authors of these Dirty Harry books always keep me guessing as to who wrote which novel, and this is a mystery I’ll probably never solve. While the “About the Author” page at the back of the book assures me that there were just two writers on this series, Ric Meyers and Leslie Alan Horvitz, while reading Massacre at Russian River I began to wonder if that was true, because again the style has changed. This book reads differently than the previous six, and the character of Harry seems different as well. The lead character often comes off like any random detective and not quite like Harry – especially in his dealings with Elsie, and particularly in the moment where he tells the girl, “I want you. I want you.” I began to wonder if there were more writers involved with this series beyond Meyers and Horvitz...
I don’t know who wrote what or how many writers there were, but even with its different style and its generic take on Harry, Massacre at Russian River was an enjoyable read. There’s plenty of action and a bit of intrigue, with Harry getting the opportunity to pull out his .44 Magnum and fire it at bad guys on multiple occasions. So it had what I was looking for, mostly.
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