420 Friendly Adventure--Spurlock: Sheriff of Purgatory

I'm becoming quite well-acquainted with Jim Morris's work. That's how I know that this novel is off the beaten path for him. At least the beaten path so far. Like Bob Dylan, it is so free-wheeling that I'm inspired to wax poetic:

Spurlock is a shrewd dude who meditates in the nude, to put him in the mood to deal with the rude and the crude, who need adjustment of attitude. He lives in a time when the US is screwed. And he likes wacky tobaccy better than food. Though Morris is hardly a prude, his prose is a far cry from lewd.

I should have been a beatnik. Or a hip-hop gangsta.

Okay, let me expound a bit without putting it into rap lyrics. (Don't worry--there is no infantile rhyming in this book.)

Morris has set this tale in an alternate reality. I'm a bit fuzzy on the historic details that led to the scenario, but the gist of it is: 1. The Ruskies won a war with the USA, and now occupy the continent. 2. The occupational army runs the economy by proxy; and that proxy is the Mafia. And you get the idea that of the two organizations, the Mafia is the more powerful. 3. There was an armed resistance to the invasion. Most of them were assimilated back into the culture, like Spurlock. The "guerrillas" remain in rural areas, operating like a minor-league (and redneck) Mafia. They are murderers, rapists and borderline psychopaths who don't even understand what it is they think they're fighting for. 4. Purgatory is such a backwater that it has been left alone since the war was lost.

Sheriff Spurlock runs his county (and his personal life) with a mixture of streetwise savvy and a Zen-like quest for balance and harmony. He has an agreement with the local guerrilla leader which maintains the status quo, such as it is, with minimal conflict. That status quo is upset when a stuttering Mafia don comes to town with plans to absorb Purgatory into his fiefdom.

Shrewd dude that he is, Spurlock proposes a compromise with the Mafia that should keep everyone happy. But the don loses face during his visit, so Spurlock is screwed, clever compromises notwithstanding.

What follows is a road trip to the Big Apple by Spurlock and a practicing witch. There are some interesting misadventures along the way, then Spurlock locates and attempts to evacuate his estranged children from a New York very much like the one Snake Pliskin had to escape from.

This is an eccentric adventure tale laced with colorful characters, Eastern philosophy and social satire. There are some nice twists and detours along the way.

Personally, I've never experimented with marijuana, drugs or Eastern mysticism. Never had an interest in doing so even though I was born in the heyday of all that flower-power Summer of Love go-go stuff. But those who have lived a far less "straight edge" life than I have will probably feel right at home accompanying Sheriff Spurlock on this quest which is, at its core, pretty dang fun.

Aim Big, Miss Big: The Shot by Phillip Kerr

Welcome back to Audio Book Theater. (Whatever will I do when I no longer pass by the library in my work travels? Guess I'll have to turn to my backlog of Audible Audio books on my Kindle--though the volume doesn't go loud enough for my beat-up ears when there's road noise to compete with.)

This book had a back cover blurb that piqued my interest. That's the purpose of a blurb, but it's still kinda' rare these days to find one that actually works. The plot had to do with an assassin who decides to go after JFK.

Now, I'm not someone who believes the "lone nut" official stories about such things, and I am especially resistant to the story that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Neither do I believe JFK was greased by a bunch of rabid right-wingers angry about the Bay of Pigs. But there's a lot of unanswered questions about the assassination and the incidents surrounding it, which could make for some fascinating conjectures in the form of a novel.

Kerr got off on the wrong foot with me because he either doesn't know there's a difference between the US Army and the Marine Corps, or he couldn't make up his mind which one the hit man Tom Jefferson came from. It doesn't require a whole lot of research to figure out that the two branches of service are not one and the same, so his use of them interchangeably speaks volumes about how little he knows and how little homework he did.

Another sore spot for me, which other authors have also rubbed, is Kerr's assumption that a sniper can take a rifle out of a box and go right to work with it without ever zeroing the sights.

There were some plot twists in The Shot, but I saw a lot of them coming a mile away. Another mark against the book is the lack of one single character who I liked.

SPOILER ALERT

And finally, the big personal disappointment: It turns out the book is not about the assassination in Dallas in 1963, but about an elaborate threat staged prior to Kennedy's inauguration. Hints were dropped that the characters of the story would later carry out the actual assassination, but I had hoped the author would have the cojones to just fill in the gaps of the the JFK puzzle with some plausible theories (BTW, I was disappointed with the puzzle-assembly Oliver Stone attempted in his film, too).

For me, this book was a fail on pretty much every level. The reader doesn't even get a transcript of the Jack & Marylin tapes, which would have at least amped up one of the few interesting aspects of the story..

A Tommygun Titan (Max Allan Collins' Road to Purgatory)

My introduction to Max Allan Collins was his graphic novel, Road to Perdition. As popular as that one is, I consider this one much better.

Let me get the blemishes out of the way, first (my nitpicking self just can't help it): Though the author obviously knows more than I about mob/mafia history, he blundered the facts a little in the Bataan segment...AND pushed the limits of believability maybe a wee bit too far.

Michael Satariano (AKA Michael Sullivan) is a troubled soul who, superficially, seems to be the perfect all-American hero. But his dark, troubled past makes it impossible for him to accept the pedestal. He is what Bruce Wayne would be like in real life (without the money). Like the Batman's alter-ego, he lost his family at a young age in a violent, traumatic fashion, to murderous criminals--and he thirsts for vengeance.

The story opens on the Philippines prior to MacArthur's evacuation. Michael's heroism and combat prowess (dwarfing that of the Transporter and the most outlandish John Woo protagonists) win him the 1st Medal of Honor in WWII, and a golden ticket back stateside where the world is his for the taking.

Haunted by his father's legacy and a lethal impulse triggered by his experiences fighting the Japanese, he dumps his perfect all-American girlfriend (who kept faithful to him while he was away), pisses away a wide-open world full of opportunities available to him, and follows a path of self-destruction. Elliot Ness is making a comeback in Chicago, and needs somebody to infiltrate the Capone mob. Without batting an eyelash, Michael signs on, and uses his Sicilian adopted father's Chicago connections to ensnare himself in the corrupt gangland leviathan.

Ness' impossible guidelines are to avoid breaking the law while winning the trust of the top mob bosses. But Michael gets trigger-happy on his first assignment, becomes a "made man" inside his first year, and quickly works his way closer to the men who ordered his father's death.

So intimately is the main character entangled with real historical figures like Ness, Al Capone, Frank Nitti and Sam Giancana, that you'll probably be tempted to do some historical research afterwards, to see just how much liberty the author took with facts. I am.

Or you can just hang on for an engrossing, blood-splattered ride with a fascinating backdrop, while Michael's allegiances shift faster than a free agency era star-caliber NFL player's.