DIRTY HARRY #12: THE DEALER OF DEATH by Dane Hartman
After the third film in the Dirty Harry franchise, The Enforcer, was released, it looked like the series’ star, Clint Eastwood, was done playing the Dirty Harry character. The public still wanted more Dirty Harry stories, though – so Warner Bros. commissioned a series of twelve novels, written by a team of at least two writers working under the pen name Dane Hartman, that would allow readers to go on more adventures with San Francisco Police Department Inspector "Dirty" Harry Callahan. With The Dealer of Death, the Dirty Harry novel series came to an end – and while I’m tempted to say the series goes out with a whimper instead of a bang, that wouldn’t be quite accurate, because there are still plenty of shootouts packed into this book’s pages.
The story begins with the line, “Hey, friend, can I give you a lift?” From there, we learn that the man offering the ride is James William Gallant, a convicted murderer who has escaped from prison and is now out for revenge. Busted by Harry Callahan, Gallant went to jail for the murder of an off-duty police officer – and now that he’s back out in the world, he’s aiming to get revenge on Callahan by stealing his .44 Magnum and using it to carry out a killing spree, targeting people that Callahan is known to have issues with. Gallant also intends to seduce the widow of the cop he killed. That woman, Sheila Richmond, now happens to be in a relationship with Harry Callahan.
When he’s not out killing people with Callahan’s .44, which he steals while Callahan is asleep at Sheila’s place, Gallant seeks shelter (and receives some plastic surgery) at a compound belonging to a group of doomsday preppers / antique dealers called The Saving Remnant. So not only does Callahan have to deal with this homicidal escaped con, but he also ends up having to go up against the members of this doomsday group, who entertain themselves while waiting for the end of the world by getting up to some awful criminal activities.
The set-up is solid enough, the story of The Dealer of Death just isn’t told in a very engaging way, and the portrayal of Harry Callahan is quite generic. He doesn’t really feel like the character from the Dirty Harry movies, he could be just any random cop having a run of bad luck.
This book also includes a bizarre moment where Callahan escapes from an apartment death trap – where bullets are fired and the place goes up in flames – by dropping through the window of the apartment below and interrupting a couple who are having sex, so into each other that not even the sounds of gunfire on the floor above was enough to get them to stop. They’re described as being “a man of about sixty and a girl who appeared scarcely older than twelve.” And even though that description implies there’s something seriously illegal going on here, Callahan just stands up and walks out of the room, saying, “Sorry about bursting in on you like this. Just go back to what you were doing, folks.” The writer either needed to edit their description of the couple, or give Callahan a more appropriate reaction. Instead, we get this moment of mind-boggling weirdness.
And with that, we come to the end of the Dirty Harry novel series. The Dealer of Death wasn’t very good, but most of the books in the series were fun to read and I had a good time going through them over the last twelve months. Thankfully, this wasn’t the end of the franchise, as Eastwood did end up coming back for two more movies... and I’ve always wished that he had come back for even more.
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