3 / 5 Stars
‘Hero and the Terror’ (251 pp) first was published in 1982;
this New English Library paperback was issued in 1988 as a tie-in with the
Chuck Norris film released that year.
The novel (which differs quite a bit from the movie) is set
in Los Angeles in the early 80s. The eponymous Hero is Herrero Fiddleman (!?),
son of a Jewish father and Puerto Rican mother. Hero, who is in his mid
thirties, has movie-star looks, drives a black 1967 Porsche convertible, owns a
dachshund named Stretch, has a model named Kay for a girlfriend, and lives
aboard a houseboat anchored at a marina near Venice Beach. Hero is revered by
Los Angelenos for being the city’s top cop: tough, brave, and ready to put
himself on the line to maintain law and order.
Hero is contemplating retiring from police work and moving
with Kay to the countryside, but one loose end continues to occupy his mind:
the apprehension of the brutal serial killer known as The Terror. After killing
22 young women in the Venice area throughout the 70s, in 1979 The Terror
suddenly ceased his atrocities. Is The Terror truly gone………..or just biding his time before re-emerging to continue his atrocities ?
As the novel opens, another young woman is murdered, and
the modus operandi is the same as that associated with the victims of The Terror’s
previous depredations. It’s up to Hero to resume his investigation of the
killer……….but this time, the urgency for capturing the murderer is even
greater. For The Terror has laid his eyes on Kay……….and found her eminently
desirable…….
‘Hero and the Terror’ contains a bit less porn and
splatterpunk content than Blodgett’s earlier novel Captain Blood, presumably
because it’s shorter in length. That said, what splatterpunk content is present in ‘Hero’
doesn’t shirk; for example, a brief segment describing a do-it-yourself
hemorrhoidectomy will stay with me for a long, long time………..
The opening chapters of the book are the best, as Hero confronts a particularly loathsome and repulsive villain who is something of a brother to Baron Harkonnen from the novel Dune.
Unfortunately, the narrative starts to stall in its middle chapters, as author Blodgett uses seemingly unending flashback sequences and subplots to get the novel to its necessary word count prior to evolving to the grand finale involving the confrontation between Hero and The Terror. Said confrontation is overlong, and at times contrived, which is why I can't award the book more than three stars.
Unfortunately, the narrative starts to stall in its middle chapters, as author Blodgett uses seemingly unending flashback sequences and subplots to get the novel to its necessary word count prior to evolving to the grand finale involving the confrontation between Hero and The Terror. Said confrontation is overlong, and at times contrived, which is why I can't award the book more than three stars.
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