Paperback: 188 pages
Publisher: Airship 27 (December 15, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0615743889
ISBN-13: 978-0615743882
I’m going to get to talking about PROHIBITION in a bit, I
promise. But first, I gotta relate a little story that will assist me in making
my opening point. Okay? Thank you for your patience and sit back. Here it goes:
Couple of weeks ago I’m having a Skype conversation with a
gentleman who is incensed that I don’t like “Hobo With A Shotgun.” It’s a
perfect modern grindhouse movie he insists. No, I politely disagree. “Planet
Terror” is a a perfect modern grindhouse movie. The gentleman spends the next two
minutes expressing his opinion that whatever it is I allegedly use for thinking
must be composed of excrement and another minute telling me that “Planet
Terror” is garbage and why on Earth do I think it’s the better movie.
“Because,” says I, “Robert Rodriguez knows what grindhouse is. The guys who made ‘Hobo With A Shotgun’
just think they know what grindhouse
is.”
Which finally brings me to PROHIBITION by Terrence McCauley.
We’ve got a lot of New Pulp writers who think
they know what a 1930’s gangster story is. But Terrence McCauley knows what a 1930’s gangster story. Man,
does he ever.
We’re in New York, 1930. The town is run by Archie Doyle,
the city’s most powerful gangster who is more like the monarch of an unruly
kingdom. And there’s somebody out there looking to take his crown. Archie’s got
an ambitious plan in mind that will give him more power than he’s ever dreamed
of before. But he’s got to stay alive long enough to see that plan through.
That’s where his chief enforcer Terry Quinn comes in. Terry’s an ex-boxer and
the toughest mug on two legs. But finding out who’s trying to start a bloody
gang war between Archie Doyle and his main rival, Howard Rothman is going to
take more than just being tough. Quinn is going to have to rely on his street smarts
and think his way through this. Of course, shooting and slugging his way to the
guilty party helps an awful lot, too.
PROHIBITION has a lot going for it, mainly that McCauley
isn’t afraid to write characters who aren’t likeable at all. But that’s okay with
me. As long as I know why the characters are doing what they’re doing and
understand their motivations, I’m cool. McCauley is writing about people who
have chosen a dark, dangerous and violent life and he stays true to that.
That’s not to say he doesn’t find the humanity in them. He does. It’s just a humanity
that manifests itself within the terms and parameters of the concrete jungle
his characters have chosen to inhabit for whatever reasons people have to live
a life of crime. This wasn’t an easy period in American history to live in and
people had to make hard choices. The characters in PROHIBITION have to make the
hardest choices of all since the wrong one can get them killed.
A lot of New Pulp writers figure that to write a 1930’s
gangster story you just have to have pseudo-tough talking wanna-be’s sounding
more like Slip Mahoney than real gangsters run around shooting Tommy guns.
McCauley understands that the most successful gangsters of that era ran their
organizations like businesses. The business just happens to be crime is all.
Violence wasn’t their first resort to solve every problem. It was just as
useful and as profitable to know when not
to use violence as it was to know when to use it.
I appreciated the smartness of these characters. The way
they talk to each other, maneuvering to gain an edge through words makes for
some really solid dialog. The relationship between Archie Doyle and Terry Quinn
reminds me a lot of the relationship between the Albert Finney/Gabriel Byrne
characters from “Miller’s Crossing.” Imagine if Gabriel Byrne’s character was
an authentic badass who knew how to fight instead of getting his ass kicked all
the time and you’ll get what I mean. Terry Quinn is a guy who knows how to work
the angles and his navigation through this gleefully violent story is an
enjoyable one to read.
And like any good gangster story, McCauley doesn’t skimp on
the sex and violence. If you want cute gangsters who pal around and crack jokes
then go watch “Johnny Dangerously” because you’re not going to find that in
PROHIBITION. I appreciated the tough, hard story McCauley is telling and the
even tougher, harder characters who speak and talk pretty much the way I expect
gangsters of that era to behave.
I’m sure that there are some who are going to be
uncomfortable or even turned off by the language and that there isn’t really an
‘heroic’ character to root for. Terry Quinn is a killer and extraordinarily
violent man who doesn’t make apologies for how he lives his life. Most readers
like to have a lead character to root for and while Terry’s misplaced sense of
honor and loyalty lifts him a notch above most of the other characters in the
book that doesn’t mean he’s anywhere near being on the side of the angels. But
it’s precisely because of that misplaced honor and loyalty that makes him such
an enjoyable protagonist to read about.
And I can’t wrap up this review without mentioning the
wonderful illustrations by Rob Moran which do an excellent job of capturing the
mood and feel of the story. I’m willing to bet next month’s rent that Rob Moran
has seen a lot of those great classic Warner Brothers black-and-white gangster
epics of the 30’s and 40’s as that’s the feeling I got from his illustrations.
So should you read PROHIBITION? Absolutely. It’s not only a terrific
way to spend a couple of quality reading hours, it’s also an important book in
the evolution of New Pulp. It’s exciting to see books like this that adds
another genre to expand what New Pulp is and can be. The bread-and-butter of
New Pulp are the masked avengers, the jungle lords and the scientific
adventurers, sure. But there’s plenty of room for sports stories, romance,
westerns and private eyes. And in the last couple of years we’ve seen those.
Hard-boiled crime stories are just as much a Classic Pulp tradition and I’m
delighted to see it being continued and represented in New Pulp. Most definitely
put PROHIBITION on your Must Read List.
