XO--SHIVA

The sequel to the novel BIG SUPERHERO ACTION:

 

 

Warren Zevon’s piano rocked a midtown alleyway where, to “Werewolves of London,” Whisky was chasing two clones. Clones ran for their lives just as fast as humans, lungs and boots pounding. These looked like overdressed bikers, tattooed heads and faces, tattoo sleeves, steel-studded black leather. Whisky was now a man-beast wearing a white suit from the 1970s. But his hair was perfect.

During the last year of the war Sandgirl hunted saboteurs. She kept surveillance on suspicious German-Americans, Japanese-Americans. She hunted them in Little Tokyo and she hunted them in Yorkville. She looked for German American Bund members. She learned to eat with chopsticks so she could infiltrate the Japanese.

After a period of Brooding, Monk 12 traveled through the forbidden Portal of the Spheres to reach the planet Earth. With him, in a sandglass, he took the sand visions of the Prophet. 

“I see a vast city. I see two forces at war. You will find a world that abounds in uncertainty. It refines uncertainty like a gem. To survive, you will adapt. Your adaptation will be to create an alter ego who will become one of their top minds. I see you confounded by your task. You will seek clarity through warfare; your war will be on the forces of chaos. There will be much there for a Monk to destroy. You will, from an advanced sense of alienation and the forbidden corruption of self-pity, assume the name Martian Justice."

 

 

            “What do you two shitheads call yourselves?”

            The grey one said, “My name is Alfred’s Tears. I kill superheroes. I specialize in dragging the bodies of dead superheroes through the street.”

            “Why?”

          “I was there when the Blue Boss wiped out the Resistance. Superheroes are tools of the one percent. Their day of reckoning has come.”

            “Do you have superpowers?”

            “I am a weapons expert with superhero-crushing violence skills and super-strength, and I have a basic ability to repair physical damage that will be useful in the war with AXIS.”

            Dr. Playground turned to the little yellow one. “What is your mask & cape?”

            The yellow one said, “My name is My Little Yellow War. I am a psychic-killing psychic. I specialize in victimizing female psychics.”

            “Why?"

           “Female psychics are shallow self-absorbed cunts.”

 

Raymond Embrack interviewed

The interview was by crime author Chris Jay Becker. This is me at my most glib. I answered honestly but maybe I was trying to improve on my drunken TV interview with Dr. Susan Block years before (See "Embrack Does Late Night"). Pix links to the interview.

The superhero novels

The covers link to Amazon. One begins the game, one changes it.

 

 

Book Report: Ghost Money by Andrew Nette

cover links to Amazon

Set in 1996, the novel begins after an ex-cop turned PI named Max Quinlan is hired to find a lost Australian businessman operating in Bangkok, Thailand. The businessman leaves a crooked trail that turns up a dead man, then leads the half-Vietnamese Quinlan to the killing fields of Cambodia, a good place to revisit his bloody roots.

The author knows this setting first-hand and makes an expert tour guide. Watching Hangover 2 is good preparation for this book. The reader is a tourist in the Far East and sights include how many Cambodians can fit on a motor bike, or the random elephant lumbering along the side of a road. This is a travelogue written in such detail the reader can take snapshots of it, take it in with all five senses and a serving of street-sold deep-fried spiders. 

This is also a close up and real-life account of a post-Vietnam War generation of Cambodians recovering from the mind-bending mass cruelty of the Khmer Rouge. '90s Cambodia is a frontier of floating wealth where the leading product is sadistic military thugs. You know a setting is hard-boiled when the Killing Fields (and their hundreds of human skulls) are a tourist attraction.

Ghost Money is a well-written debut novel that doesn't waste a single word or detail. It's a terminally interesting read in an Asian fusion of noir, war story, and pulp adventure.

The Peter Surf novels

First rule of the Peter Surf private eye novel: the case has never been done in a private eye novel.

Second rule: pull off the first rule.


Book covers link to Amazon.



Surf has to take out the Aztec, a hitman too insane for the Mexican drug cartels.

When the killers of a '90s rapper make a comeback to target his son, Surf gets the case.

Surf gets a client who hires him to recover her stolen sex fantasy.

Surf takes on a terrorist group that only targets private eyes.

Adult crime fiction: El Pervisto Demonicum

Through his thick glasses, Rockwell gazed up at the deep blue sky and the nude woman growing out of his pelvis like a blonde suntan tree. Tina Brutomesso had too much hair and an uncaged body always in stiletto heels. Rockwell still couldn’t believe he was permitted to lounge by the pool screwing Vincent Brutomesso’s wife while the gangsters working for Vincent were only allowed to stand around and do nothing, maybe get him a martini. Rockwell lie there like a human sponge, soaking in the warmth, the heat, the human touch of a woman. Other men had never not known it, had never missed a drop of it, but to him it had taken his lifetime just to reach this spot where an actual female was letting him into the human race. Women had the keys to the human race and he’d been locked out until now. Instead of throwing him a sip of water and a pat on the head, the Gypsy Girl was screwing the Hunchback like he was Brad Pitt. Now, gazing up at the blonde warmth massaging his thin yet flabby chest, he told her everything. "Tina...there’s something you don’t know about me." "Don’t need to know." "This is about when I was in prison." "You were Vincent’s prison friend, right?" "I was more than that." "Tell me." "In prison I had a specialty. I did things for people. It got me things, it got me protection. I was an artist. That’s how I got the name Rockwell, after Norman Rockwell. Vincent gave it to me." "Wow. Norman Rockwell drew Charlie Brown, right?" "I drew pictures. Sexy pictures. Of women. Or men. Or whatever. Depending on what the inmate wanted. For their private use." "You drew porno prison art?" "Yeah. But I’m good at it. Better than anyone should ever become at it. Fact is, I’m a genius. Guys have been killed over my work. My work is addictive. For cons, my stuff replaced porn. For some, even sex." Yeah, but he still didn’t tell her everything. Some had special orders. The pedophile serial killer who wanted clown ponies and little girls. The bomb freak who wanted big-tit biker babes with ferocious tiger-toothed cunts. The ones the client had to explain while Rockwell listened like a shrink. The ones that used up some pencils more than others, like stainless steel grey and scarlet red. The ones that made him study medical books and practice spatter patterns. Rockwell could carry their perversity as well as his own: it made him slightly less alone. Rockwell thought back over the ones he’d done for Vincent. Vincent Brutomesso was a man who had prison guards delivering him t-bone steaks. Six foot three-hundred-pound tattooed convicts flipped the steaks for him. Once there was a guy who crossed Brutomesso. A week later, the body was found under the prison with the heart ripped out, the head removed with a chainsaw. But in the sex fantasies of Vincent Brutomesso, it was 1957 and he was a one year old surrounded by his mother and her two sisters. He was a one year old with the genitals of an adult. His mother and her two sisters, three plush large-breasted women from Sicily, adored the child, couldn’t keep their eyes or hands off him. They adored his large penis, sucking it while he sucked their large breasts. So Rockwell left out the details, stuck to the facts. "Even after I got out, Vincent still wants me to make drawings for him. That’s why he keeps me here." Tina was silent for a moment. "Then draw for him," she said. "It doesn’t bother you?" "Why would it? I don’t care. As long as I have the real you." "That’s a new idea, Tina. No one ever wanted any part of me but my work--and that was only convicts. Perverted convicts." "I want you. Get used to love, Rockwell." Behind the glasses, Rockwell started to cry. A lifetime of ice-encrusted ice softened and cracked inside him, the ice that had been imprisoning something live and human that had never felt sunlight. His tears were melted ice. Sobbing, he thought about what he drew--used to draw--for himself since the age of his first hard-on: chicks with impossibly long pale white legs in black nylons. Tina’s legs weren’t as long, but now that he was human, he understood part of being human was accepting the limits of three dimensions. Vincent Brutomesso sat with his prick in one hand, his other hand bringing up the drawing for a closer look. They were all wrong. The lighting was flat and the skin tones lacked the glossy density that was Rockwell’s genius. The pen strokes were now careless, the pencil strokes rushed, naked paper showing through their colors. His eyes could no longer touch their dark ivory flesh, pale with the aroused flush of salmon pink underneath. Vincent couldn’t smell the milk on the sepia of their huge nipples. The sunlight on the bedspread lacked the innocence of his dreams’ dreams. Worse. They didn’t look like the women he saw in the faded photo album of his mind. Brutomesso went back to the first panel then back up through the sequence of pictures. This...this was a fucking sketch, a shadow of Rockwell’s prison artistry. A tear ran down Brutomesso’s cheek. For the first time in his life, Brutomesso put his prick back inside his trousers untouched. There was no point in even trying. Then he put the drawings back into the envelope. His thumb wiped the wetness below his eyelids. Tears turned to frustration. Frustration turned to rage. Rage turned to cold calculation. Since getting out, Rockwell’s technique had been slipping. The answer was simple. Brutomesso left his pod, went to one of the phones, phoned his brother Tony at the house. He told Tony what had to happen. Sitting at the desk in the office, Tony always said yes to his older brother, always had, still did, even when Vincent was inside doing three life sentences. Take care of this ex-con loser called Rockwell--yes, Vincent. Set him up with in the guest house--yes, Vincent. Put him on salary at one thousand per week--yes, Vincent. Give Rockwell whatever he needs, give Rockwell whatever he wants, keep Rockwell happy, even get my wife to fuck Rockwell, just keep bringing me the envelopes Rockwell gives you--yes, Vincent. But even from prison, the outfit Vincent still controlled still paid well enough for this shit, so Tony always said yes, always followed orders, and always would. Until the day Tony took over. This order he liked. This time it was find a way to get Rockwell back in prison. Yes Vincent. Even better, get him back in for life. Tony hung up. Prison made Vincent hard in the cock but soft in the head. Rockwell was a wormy little four-eyed loser, a sick fucking freak who Vincent treated like a genius. This was a chance to get rid of him. Tony went out on the grounds of the Brutomesso estate, to the pool, where that little prick had the nerve to be lounging with Vincent’s wife. Look at her massaging the freak, her big jugs hanging in his face. Guess what? Those days were about to end. An hour later, Rockwell was in the guest house watching golf with a martini when Tony walked in without knocking. "Rockwell, we need to talk." "About what?" "New plans. You’re going out of town for a while." "I am?" "Yeah. Just a short trip." "Is something wrong, or...?" "Nothing wrong. Just a little move you need to make." "I don’t understand." "You don’t have to. Vincent says you have to make a short trip, that’s what you do. Any problems? Didn’t think so. You’re going tomorrow, you’ll be back in a week. Get packed." Then Tony left. His weasel instincts setting off the danger alarm, Rockwell knew his time was up. It was time to disappear. Until he found the Porsche gone and four Brutomesso cousins standing guard on the grounds, watching the guest house. They were still there the next morning when Rockwell went out for a swim. He swam in the morning sun for a time. Then a nude Tina spike heeled out to he pool with two martinis then splashed in, wedging him between pool’s edge and her implants. Rockwell took a jolt of martini before he could speak. "Tina. I have a problem." "I know. Vincent wants you to take a trip." "You know?" "I know what Vincent has in mind for you." "What?" "The plan is to set you up for a drug bust at the airport. A large drug bust. One that will put you back in for life. Vincent thinks your work has suffered since you got out. Vincent thinks you need to go back to prison to get back your talent." The scope of Brutomesso’s evil gave Rockwell an out-of-body experience. He saw himself shrieking behind a slamming cell door. "I knew it," he said. "I didn’t want to know it, but I knew it." "Why can’t you just draw what he wants?" "I can’t do it. I’ve lost my touch." "How?" "It’s you." "Me?" "My talent came from a lifetime alone. The only women I ever had were the ones I drew. Being the freak that I am, I reached the level of genius. But since you...I can’t do this shit any longer. I can’t go back to that. You turned me into a human being. " For the first time, Tina was looking at him with a look he wasn’t expecting. It lacked warmth. "I’ll tell you something about Vincent." Rockwell didn’t like the tone now in her eyes. It seemed to drain the strength from his floating body. "Like what?" "Do you know how evil Vincent is?" "Yes." "No you don’t. Vincent shot my father in the head. On our wedding day." Rockwell tried harder to breathe. "I didn’t know that." "Yeah. I married him anyway. You don’t say no to Vincent. Now he uses me to keep a sick creep drawing dirty pictures for him to masturbate to. But you don’t say no to Vincent. You wait years for the opportunity, you wait until he’s finally helpless. Then you find the one way you can rip Vincent’s prick from his helpless body. By killing you." Tina’s hands took his face, then shoved his head under the water. He tried to move his arms but they were now empty sleeves. Something outside of him had taken hold, like drugs. Had to be the martini. Something she’d put in it. She could drown him and it would look like an accident. Submerged under the blue water, he only wanted to get things straight: one side wanted him Inside for life and the other side wanted him dead. Didn’t matter. Rockwell still loved her. Tina was the only woman who had ever given him enough attention to kill him. Gratitude was a powerful thing. He was grateful enough to die for her. Wait a minute. Now his lungs were out of air and the only air he had to breathe was water and water was unbreathable. Fuck her--this insane bitch was trying to kill him! He wanted to pull himself up by her big tits but his entire body was now a limp prick. Black coldness seeped around his existence, which was now a scream going berserk inside a shrinking cage. Rockwell was on his back. Between stretches of blackness, his brain slowly sketched in the sights around him. A hospital room. A man. Then the man again. The man said, "Rockwell." Then the man said "FBI." Rockwell tried to move his lips. "Don’t bother," FBI Man said. "You came close to death. Just listen. We’ve been keeping you under surveillance. We were watching when Tina Brutomesso tried to drown you. We intervened." The FBI man added a silence to let that sink in. It sank in. "We pulled you out of there for a reason." Another pause, same effect. "You remember a convict who got out a year ago? The one who had an obsession with tiger-toothed vaginas?" Rockwell nodded. "He’s a serial bomber with a list of government targets. We want to open a website to lure him. Guess what’s on it? Your pencils are waiting. This time you get to be a sick fucking pervert for your country." Rockwell was alive. Yet toward the white ceiling his eyes rolled. When you’re a sex machine, the bitches won’t leave you alone.  Copyright 2002 Raymond Embrack

The Brooks Wilson

Cover art by Robert McGinnis

Peter Gunn is back.

Last weekend I came upon Me TV, the only cable channel that today runs the 1959 private eye TV series Peter Gunn. As well, the series is finally out on DVD. Peter Gunn was well before my time, discovered decades later, the music before the TV series. Lately been watching Me TV's vintage reruns and getting acquainted with how horrible the TV shows were in the first ten years of network television. In most of them the lead was cast for his square jaw and how he looked in a Sydney LaVine suit. The acting was maybe slightly better than just letting us read the cue cards. A few of them, like Honey West, come off with more style. Compared to other square-jawed suits of the time, Craig Stevens' cooler subtler personification of Peter Gunn holds up today, even if a 30-minute cop show shot in your basement has no relation to TV as it's been known since the end of polio.

The music from Peter Gunn is music for the terminally suave. It is music for danger, luxury, champagne and midnight make-outs with Vogue models. But even the coolest Space Age TV shows were never as cool as their music. Imagine a version of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. that was as cool as the theme song. Or The Avengers (British TV spy series version) where being as cool as the theme song was an impossibility.

A must-read is this influential 1978 Premiere Magazine column by Donald Fagen on being a child of the '50s, on watching Peter Gunn, on Peter Gunn music, and the utter spreemness of Mancini:

http://www.steelydan.com/premiere3.html

On The Long Kiss Goodnight

Now I get it. This 1996 action picture influenced my 2000 novel PEEL. The PI novel is about a woman who hires the PI to recover her stolen sex fantasy. Am watching the picture while writing this and seeing the similarities to a woman recovering a lost identity as a government assassin. My book even has the movie's alternative use of a hypodermic needle on a henchman about to use it on the hero. My fringe appreciation for this picture has just moved up a notch.

The picture is one of those '90s action movies when '90s action movies were in their heyday. Director Renny Harlin made two attempts to turn his wife Geena Davis into an action star, the pirate movie Cutthroat Island, and this one. Both failed horribly, but they left behind an underrated pirate movie and an action movie I check out when it turns up on Cinemax every few years. Geena Davis is equally perfect in both sides of the same role, the amnesiac housewife and the badass superhero hitwoman. I like the hitwoman more. At one point she says to the bad guys "Suck my dick, you bastards" before turning them into an ashtray. Plus it has Sam Jackson at his most smartass as a smartass loser PI. Plus it has a smartass Shane Black script that's almost as quotable as The Last Boy Scout, Black's most quotable '90s action movie.

I can see now I have a weakness for action pictures that have a tall hot actress playing dual roles as the same character. While the '90s Hollywood action movie is an overly and sadistically slick product wrapped in American cheese food, this is one of those with so much flavor it's a go-to for your late-night exploding warehouse sandwich.

The single best scene in a 007 picture ever