By HERBERT KASTLE (Dell; 1975)
From the late “Herbert the Pervert” Kastle, author of forgotten trash-fests like THE MOVIE MAKER (1968), ELLIE (1973) and LADIES OF THE VALLEY (1979), here’s an X-rated thriller whose 1975 copyright date (a time when mainstream fiction was much wilder than it is now) is fully evident.
It’s about the 49 year old businessman Evan, who at the start of a cross-country drive out of NYC picks up the aspiring actress Lois. Before long they’re joined by another hitchhiker, an amoral drifter named John, and the sexual shenanigans begin. Evan and John get plenty of in-car and hotel room action from Lois, often in the form of “the forbidden three instead of the Biblical two,” and a young lesbian picked up by John briefly turns this three-way dynamic into a foursome. Danger, however, is never far from the surface, as demonstrated by a gun that changes hands at least once.
The book’s other major character is Edmund Roersch, a burnt out detective who turned up in Kastle’s subsequent novels THE GANG (1976) and DEATH SQUAD (1977). Roersch is on the trail of Evan, Lois and John, believing that Evan is a serial killer; it transpires, however, that all three are questionable sorts, which keeps us wondering who the detective’s real target might be. It’s eventually revealed, of course, during a Grand Canyon sojourn that includes a hokey cliffside confession and a long fall.
This is the sort of thing Jim Thompson could have pulled off in under two hundred pages, but Herbert Kastle stretches his narrative to a numbing 347. He does this by including an astounding amount of perversion that grows dull after a while, as well as obnoxious minutiae about the detective’s investigation and childhood flashbacks experienced by the protagonists, none of whom are terribly interesting, much less sympathetic.
Worst of all, the novel is self-important. Kastle really seemed to believe he was creating some kind of profound psychological exploration (as did his longtime pal Harlan Ellison, who provides a back cover blurb promising a book “Filled with shadows and the sounds of voices calling from your own past”) rather than the lurid potboiler CROSS COUNTRY is.