You already know that we here at BluntForce we love us some Hugh Hefner and was love us some infographics. Especially infographics with naked lady silhouettes.

Well the good people at OnlineSchools have put together another nice one to keep accomodating our perverse fetishes. This time we traverse across the fascinating history of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner and peruse 16 interesting facts about the man.

Via: Online Schools

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For my money, one of the most exciting happenings in indie publishing is going down in England via a scorching DIY rock n’ roll operation that calls itself Pulp Press. Their books, pocket-sized blasts of hardcore mayhem meant to resurrect the dime pulp novels of yesteryear, are stripped lean of all excess. At roughly 23,000 words, these little bastards can be burned through in a sitting without any difficulty, and are one hell of a great time. When I was sent a pile of the suckers to review, I thought the best way to kick things off would be to get main man Danny Bowman, who has published two novels of his own in the series writing as Danny Hogan, to explain what Pulp Press is all about. Check it out. . . .

Pulp Press touts itself as producing “fiction like it used to be.” What do you mean by that, and what was the catalyst that made you decide fuck it, I’m going to start putting out books myself?

Absolutely, the whole thing about Pulp Press is making reading entertaining. I think the story game has become spoiled by writers trying to be too damned clever and publishers and booksellers being too snooty and conservative regarding what they take on. Pulp Press is all about bringing the story back to basics and make it an easy read rather than some existential brouhaha.

Pulp Press has already released seven titles in a relatively short time, with quite a flurry out recently. Do you have a schedule you are trying to work to? Do you have a certain goal for how many books you will put out in a given year?

I hope that over time I settle into some kind of schedule. I brought out a flurry of new books to do a kind of showcase at the London Book Fair this year. Why? I don’t rightly know, but I plan to take a bit more slow and steady in the future.

What has the response been like since you started putting these books out?

The response has been a little too good, you know. I am bracing myself for the negativity which I am sure is due to me sooner or later.

What elements do you think define “pulp” fiction?

Entertainment which is cheap, disposable appeals to our good old base instincts like lust and vengeance. Just what I like.

Who are the writers that inspired you to write the kinds of stories you do, as well as the ones you choose to publish?

I grew up on the old Skinhead pulps of Richard Allen but I would say it was Hunter Thompson that got me into writing. I would say though that it is the graphic novelist Garth Ennis who really got me into that economic, darkly humorous and revenge filled style of writing that I want to do. In terms of publishing I want people who can kick out a good old no hold barred story featuring an underdog doing good and coming out winning. They’re my favorite kind of stories.

Any plans for US distribution? What about eBooks?

When I think of ebook I remind myself of the Jack Horner character in the film Boogie Nights and his attitude to video. I can’t stand the idea of the damned things. Especially as reader costs £300 ($500 – $600). I don’t associate with people who have that kind of money to throw away on a gadget and I ain’t setting out to appeal to those kind of people either. And show me a person whose happy getting into a story on their mobile phone and I’ll show you a damned fool. However, I ain’t going to make the same mistake as old Jack did, so let’s just say I’m looking into it.

Will Pulp Press ever release more traditional, 50K+ word titles?

Mate, in this day and age where most people have the attention span of a retard with sunburn I believe that short, punchy and unpretentious novels are the way to go, trust me. But hey, never say never that’s what I say.

One of the best things about the Pulp Press titles is the uniformity of the packaging. Each book looks like a battered old paperback, featuring gritty cover art by Alex Young. How did this aesthetic come about, and what’s the story on this Alex Young guy anyway?

There’s a magazine going about Brighton called Impure and around the time the Grindhouse films came out they did a special to publicize the films and had the cover all manipulated and crusty looking. I asked talented artist, my long time friend and best man at my upcoming wedding Alex Young if he could do that with the cover design and he said, “sure, dude” and look what he done did. Regarding what’s the deal with this Alex Young guy? Check Twitter and Facebook blow up when I pose that very question.

Any plans to release any pulpy stuff with laser guns or boxers or barbarians hacking enemies apart with broadswords? Or do you plan to stick to a more modern, hardboiled style of pulp?

Sci-Fi – definitely, my next project will feature some that, Westerns for sure. Boxing? That’s an interesting one, but probably some MMA or bare-knuckled stuff. Sword and Sorcery kind of stuff I think is pretty much so much its own genre and kind of so removed from the stuff I want to put out, but hey, remember what I always say ‘never say never’.

Anything else in particular you’d like to say about Pulp Press and the books you’re publishing?

Pulp Press is doing a tour of the US in September of this year anybody who wants to meet for a drink and a laugh and maybe buy Pulp Press products off of me directly in Vienna, Virginia; Memphis; New Orleans; Houston; Austin; Truth or Consequences; Tucson; San Diego; Las Vegas and Oklahoma city give me a shout on Twitter.
____________________________

In closing, here are reviews of the two Danny Bowman novels for Pulp Press, writing as Danny Hogan.

Killer Tease

In the opening scene of this tight revenge story, burlesque-dancer-with-a-short-fuse Eloise Murphy smashes a glass of booze into the face of a would-be suitor, “grinding until she could feel bone and hear him squeal like the bitch he was,” after watching him attempt to sneak a little something into her drink. She is pulled away before she can finish the douchebag with a well-placed stiletto heel, and promptly loses her job. From there her life is set on a downward spiral that only a double helping of determination – and willingness to commit violence – can pull her out of.

Eloise’s journey takes her through some of the seedier streets of Brighton as she struggles to continue making her way as a dancer pushing thirty. After opening a show for a rock n’ roll band, and learning just how meager the earnings are in that particular world, she is blackmailed into taking a gig at a new club for “discerning gentlemen with very special tastes.” When she turns the tables and escapes the intended result of that gig, the brutal retribution brought against Eloise by her blackmailer would have been the end of most women. But Eloise isn’t like most women; not one to stay down when she’s kicked, her vengeance is swift, violent and deadly.

Killer Tease is a razor-edged tale that sets a no bullshit tone for what this imprint will be all about. Call it a Mission Statement of sorts, if you want; it reads more like a battle cry to me.

The Windowlicker Maker

Danny Hogan’s latest, and the most recent publication from Pulp Press, is another greasy serving of the dish best served cold. The book opens with our first-person narrator, Joe Tatum, down on the sidewalk outside a movie theater, “pissing blood from a big, fuck off stab wound” in his side. Tatum’s natural tendency to respond with violence is overcome when he remembers his promise to his wife, who is at his side, to abandon the criminal life he’d led previously. Instead, they plead with their four assailants to leave them alone, to run off before the cops arrive. Just as sirens are heard in the distance, one of the rogues pulls a pistol and kills Ava, Tatum’s wife, in cold blood.

From there our former hard man sinks into the depths of despair, wallowing in grief but holding to the promise to his late wife to live a peaceful life. He endures another beating at the hands of the same attackers when they recognize him in the neighborhood, but, when a third encounter sees the lives of others being threatened by the actions of the arrogant hoodlums, he finally snaps into action. Tatum’s revenge is swift and calculated, and the book’s body count explodes like the final showdown in a Sam Peckinpah film as he tracks his enemies’ path of destruction back to the source inspiring them.

What I appreciate most about The Windowlicker Maker is that Hogan doesn’t burden the proceedings with unnecessary back story on our narrator. The character’s inner musings hint that he left a career of dark, two-fisted-and-worse deeds, including time behind bars, to devote his life to Ava, but we don’t get the specifics. Instead, we see how capable he is when he finally takes matters into his own hands. This is effective, and keeps the story focused as the proceedings reach their grim, inevitable conclusion. Sharp eyes will notice a cameo appearance by Eloise from Killer Tease; this was also an excellent little touch by Hogan.

As a pocket-sized bundle of raw nerves and energy, The Windowlicker Maker is another fine offering from Pulp Press, and even includes a post-apocalyptic short story by Hogan called A Gun Called Comeuppance. If you’re wondering what a “windowlicker maker” actually is, though, you’ll have to read the book.

For people interested in buying Pulp Press titles, you may visit their Amazon UK store HERE. American distribution is being handled by Murder By the Book in Houston, TX, who offer a fantastic mail order option. Fans of quick, exciting reads that capture the look and feel of an era of fiction long past should make all kinds of haste to pick these titles up.

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Opening paragraph: I faked a cough, put my hand over my mouth to hide the grin. I knew it wasn’t funny really, but the surprised look on Luke Jordan’s dead face caught me just right. Luke was the first dead guy I’d ever seen up close except for in a funeral home.

One warning before picking up this book: don’t crack it open unless you are willing to park your ass in place for a couple hours and read it front to back in one sitting. Because once the action starts – and it starts almost immediately – it doesn’t stop until the end of the book. It is almost impossible to put down.

The Deputy (2010, Tyrus Books) takes place over the waning hours of a single hot, humid night in August. Toby Sawyer is an aimless twenty-something who had abandoned the tiny Oklahoma town of Coyote Crossing to pursue his dream as a musician. Things didn’t turn out as planned, and when his mother died shortly after his graduation from the police academy, he returned home to bury her, got a girl pregnant, and ended up staying. Now he’s a part time deputy, and really has no higher aspirations than getting hired on full time. When the body of a local bully and small time criminal turns up, and disappears under his watch (he’d left it unattended just long enough to sneak off and fuck his underage girlfriend, despite having a wife and young son at home), Toby is certain he’ll be fired.

Events kick up several notches from there. Before the sun rises Toby will get laid one-and-a-half more times (once by his wife, and almost again a second time with his girlfriend) before getting abandoned or dumped by both. He’ll wreck his car, then steal and trash a couple other vehicles that don’t belong to him. He’ll also be being shot at, attacked with an axe and clawed in the face. Through it all he manages to survive long enough to produce an impressive body count of his own, all while uncovering an illegal human smuggling ring that may or may not include more than half of the Coyote Crossing police force – his co-workers. Not bad work for a guy we really don’t have any reason to believe would have it in him to be so efficient at killing people, either in self defense or out of vengeance.

Here’s the thing about this book. If you are the kind of reader who wants to pick holes in the narrative, find flaws, or otherwise deconstruct a novel, then you should probably stay away. The book has plenty elements to make one raise an eyebrow over when it comes to the believability department. Toby makes some choices here that are hard to imagine anyone smart enough to get through the police academy making. He’s relatively blasé about all the people he kills. Not only that, but lawman or not some of those kills are essentially murders that would be very difficult to explain away when the events of the night come under investigation.

I don’t care about any of that. Victor Gischler has written a balls-out action movie of a book, with plenty of sex and violence to appease the most diehard of fans, and that is what I was after when I sat down to read. The story may be long on action and short on character development, but it’s fun. It’s easy to understand Toby’s motivations, and Gischler captures perfectly the dead-end life in a remote small town and the impossible-seeming struggle to get away from it. Toby’s not a guy I’d want to give any responsibility to, or be forced to count on to watch my back, but if I were pinned down beside a car with gangsters filling it full of holes, I wouldn’t mind having him along for the action.

Besides The Deputy, Gischler has written the novels Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse, Vampire a Go-Go, Shotgun Opera, Suicide Squeeze, and Gun Monkeys. He has also written for Marvel Comics, including runs on characters The Punisher and Deadpool. The guy knows his mayhem, and he’s got a great sense of humor. Gischler knows what his readers want and delivers it in gory handfuls. What more could you want?

For something new that is exciting and drips blood but doesn’t require a huge time commitment, give The Deputy a try. Fans of violent crime fiction will love it.

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Hoodtown — A Lucha-Noir Novel by Christa Faust
Cover and Interior Illustrations by Rafael Navarro

Opening paragraph: Name’s X. I’m a wrestler, at least I used to be. They used to call me the Ice Queen, on account of my ice-colored eyes and emotionless persona in the ring. I’m a ruda, a stone cold bitch and no kinda hero, but I still have a story that needs telling. Oh, right, and in case you couldn’t tell by this mask on my head, I’m a Hood.

I’ve always been a fan of crime and action movies, but, despite being a voracious reader since I could open a book, I had never read many crime novels. That changed last year. It started when I read Darwyn Cooke’s graphic novelization of Richard Stark’s The Hunter. After that, the first novel I read was a gem from Hard Case Crime called Money Shot, by Christa Faust. I loved it. I immediately started tracking down whatever I could that she had written, and my path led next to Hoodtown.

This book is one of the most fun and original books I’ve ever read, hands down.

Faust has done a little alternate reality world building with this novel that is so perfect that it seems this town should exist. Essentially “Hoodtown” is a border slum section of Angel City that is its own little island of a very specific culture. All the people who are native to the area wear luchador masks from birth; they are never seen without them. There are special “barbers” they go to to have their skin treated, and even then their faces are never exposed. Wrestlers are their superstars. Their religious icons are El Santo and The Hooded Virgin, Our Lady of Secrets.

Locals, called “Hoods,” don’t think much of people from outside the neighborhood. Those folks they call “Skins,” and Skins don’t think much of Hoodtown either:

“Skins call it a slum and menace. They love to get on the radio and whine about what a sewer it is, but they can’t seem to stop their hapless offspring from showing up every weekend to fuck our hookers and drink our tequila. All their freaks and rejects, criminals and runaways and anyone who needs to disappear, they all wind up in Hoodtown.”

Our narrator, X, is a former wrestler. She makes money where she can; for example, in a club much like a peepshow or sex club, she fake wrestles “johns” for cash; they get off reenacting her bouts, and she mechanically goes through the motions not unlike a stripper grinding away on lonely men in the dark corners of a strip club. Her life changes when a young woman is discovered murdered. Worse, the victim is also unmasked, a violation that is the worst thing that can happen to a Hood. The killer seems to have taken the mask with him, as if he is collecting it as a trophy. And he doesn’t stop with just one girl.

X becomes involved in an effort to find the killer. Before the novel reaches its climax, she comes face-to-face with brutal suspects who would rather fight than talk, and an old lover who happens to be the most famous luchador of them all. She is forced to deal with Skin policemen who don’t seem to care much for what is happening in the neighborhood, and must negotiate with a midget crime boss named El Jefe. There are many fights, lots of blood and tears and fire before the truth is revealed, and X does not emerge unscathed, physically or mentally.

It is a tight, well-written thriller that would be made into a movie if there were any justice in the world at all. X is one of the best protagonists I’ve read in any genre; her voice and personality, and the lines that roll off her tongue, stayed with me long after I finished the book, and nothing would make me happier than to see her revisited in fiction. The fact that her tremendous ass is commented on regularly doesn’t hurt. “At least someone appreciates,” X says, “all the quesadillas that had to die to make this ass what it is today.”

Faust has done a phenomenal job creating this utterly believable setting. I have spent many days in Tucson, Arizona, and Hoodtown felt like it belonged somewhere in that dusty city, even if Angel City is more a facsimile of Los Angeles. Hoodtown is a story that can be read for its face value alone and be appreciated, but one can’t help but feel there is a certain amount of social commentary going on beneath the surface of Faust’s storytelling.

I don’t think she is an author going out of her way to politicize anything she writes, but there is a familiarity with specific cultures and how they clash that this book casts a light on, and it can’t be purely coincidental. The beauty of it is that Christa does it so well, and with such a light touch, that it doesn’t overshadow the brilliance of an excellent noir tale told by one of the best.

I’m a huge fan of Christa Faust, and a huge fan of this book. I think everyone who loves books full of bloody knuckles and f-words should read it. Not to mention fans of woman wrestlers with gloriously enormous asses.

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by Jens H Altmann

The year is 1954. The place is a newsstand. The object is a pulp novella: “Bastei Kriminalroman #68: Ich suchte den Gangster-Chef” (Bastei Mystery Novel #68: I Searched for the Gangster-Boss). The man is FBI agent Jeremiah “Jerry” Cotton, who fights organized crime in the New York area.

The novella’s success surprised everyone, especially the novella’s writer, Delfried Kaufmann. After all, his intention had been to parody the pulpish end of American mystery novels. Kaufmann detested those novels.

Two years and 20 books later, Jerry Cotton was moved out of the Bastei Kriminalroman-series and into his own. The series was so successful that it spawned a reprint series in 1959, a third printing series in 1970, and a fourth printing of selected “bestsellers” which ran from 1978 until 1996. If you add the paperback edition of all-new novels, which was launched in 1963, it adds up to quite a run. The publisher Bastei claims that Jerry Cotton has sold 850 million copies worldwide.
Kaufmann wasn’t credited as the creator until he was outed in 1998. He preferred anonymity. Instead, Bastei credited the series to the house name Jerry Cotton, which was in part made possible by the fact that the novels were written in first person singular. It worked very well, so well that the FBI eventually felt the need to issue a (German language) statement about how Jerry Cotton was not a real-life FBI agent, or even an actual living person.

Using a house name, in the widest sense of the word, also offered the publisher the opportunity to exchange writers. The readers didn’t care who wrote the novels. They just wanted their Jerry Cotton-fix. Nobody knows exactly how many writers have contributed to the series since its inception. It’s certain that it has been at least 100. Estimates range from 150 to 180 writers, with only a fraction known by name.
Jerry Cotton is still on a weekly publishing schedule, quickly approaching its 2,800th issue.
* * *

JERRY COTTON AT THE MOVIES
Jerry Cotton has been called the German James Bond (only without the sex or the gadgets). It seemed to make sense, then, to put him on the big screen.

The first movie, “Schüsse aus dem Geigenkasten” (Gunshots From the Violin Case) was released in 1965. Like most German movies of the time, it was shot in black & white. The German city of Hamburg stood in for New York City in this first movie. Later movies in the series had a bigger budget and were not only filmed in color (from #5 onwards), but actually shot at least in part on location in the US. Most of the roles were cast with German actors, such as Jerry’s partner Phil Decker, who was played by Heinz Weiss.

Jerry Cotton, however, was played by a 100% American actor: George Nader (no relation to the politician). Nader had been forced to leave Hollywood in the mid-1960s, after having been outed as a homosexual. He played Jerry Cotton in altogether eight movies. Although they were all B-movies even by the standards of the 1960s, they were very popular and made Nader a star (by German standards). The last of the eight movies was released in 1969. Since the novels had made a point of never giving a physical description of its titular hero, Nader remains the face of Jerry Cotton to this day.

Cotton-creator Kaufmann on the other hand is probably happier with the new movie that was released in March 2010. Here, Jerry Cotton is played by comedian Christian Tramitz, and it is the parody that Kaufmann had always intended Cotton to be. Sadly, most reviewers agree that the original movies, although not intended as comedies, are far funnier than this reboot.

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Opening line: So I’m on my way to work and I stop to watch a pigeon fight a rat in the snow, and some fuckhead tries to mug me!

Josh Bazell’s debut novel Beat the Reaper packs a whole lot of blood, guts and humor into one helluva page-turner. I picked it up on the basis of a couple very strong recommendations and had a gas with it.

The crux of the action spans a single night at Manhattan Catholic Hospital where our first-person protagonist, Peter Brown, is a doctor doing his residency. He gets through the night, high on Moxfane, in a quest to avoid being killed. During the course of this night he not only sees to a number of patients with various ailments (a man suffering from “ass pain”, a woman who is scheduled to have her leg amputated, a war veteran with gangrenous feet resulting from complications from diabetes, etc. ) that are described in sometimes gross-out detail (Bazell has a BA in English lit and writing from Brown University and an MD from Columbia), but also fights off a number of assaults and breaks his own leg in an escape attempt.

Because Peter Brown is also Pietro “Bearclaw” Brnwa, a former mob hit man now a member of the Federal Witness Protection Program. When one of his new patients, who happens to be terminal, recognizes him, shit hits the fan. The patient thinks Dr. Brown is there to whack him, and with a phone call creates a situation where, in the event of his death, the mob people who would love nothing more than to find Bearclaw Brnwa will be alerted to where he can be found.

Through the course of the book Dr. Brown reveals his history, how his grandparents – who raised him in the absence of both mother and father – were killed by mob wannabes looking to be “made”, and how this drove him to seek out mob connections in order to ultimately avenge their deaths. It just turned out he had a natural aptitude for fighting and killing people. Between scenes in the hospital we see Brown’s life story and how he got to the place he is. Violence is rampant in the book, and there is a thread of humor that makes the book laugh-out-loud funny many times. Of particular interest are little footnotes scattered throughout that provide more detail to statements made on the page. For example, in a section describing how he loves Dexedrine because the pill is shield-shaped with a line down the middle so it looks like a vulvae, a footnote is referenced that says:

In fact, the medical word for pubic hair, “escutcheon,” means “shield,” although in free-range humans only women’s pubic hair is shield-shaped. Men’s is naturally diamond-shaped, pointing up toward the navel as well as down toward the groin. Which is why women who shave their pubic hair into a diamond shape subconsciously skeeze you out.

This book is a perfect mix of bloody, crime-ridden action and amusing anecdotal insight into all the bullshit that surrounds the medical profession, plus some interesting little factual nuggets. For a quick, exciting read that is a gruesome kick in the ass, one can do a lot worse than this book. Highly recommended.

Order Beat the Reaper on Amazon

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Illustration by Matt Dorfman

The good folk over at ChuckPalahniuk.net pointed us to a feature article on Men’s Health penned by writer Chuck Palahniuk. He lays out an interesting foundation on how to renew yourself by going through the steps that an individual might take before ending their life.

Read Live Like You’re Dying here.

And Chuck has a new book, TELL-ALL coming out on May 4, 2010 with the following description:

Soaked, nay, marinated in the world of vintage Hollywood, Tell-All is a Sunset Boulevard–inflected homage to Old Hollywood when Bette Davis and Joan Crawford ruled the roost; a veritable Tourette’s syndrome of rat-tat-tat  name-dropping, from the A-list to the Z-list; and a merciless  send-up of Lillian Hellman’s habit of butchering the truth that will have Mary McCarthy cheering from the beyond.

Tell-All is funny, subversive, and fascinatingly clever. It’s wild, it’s wicked, it’s  bold-faced—it’s vintage Chuck.

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Our “hero” Felix Soandso traverses a nightmarish acid-scape of Middle America in the town of Dreamfield, an otherwise laconic Hell-hole standing in for the worst qualities of conspicuous consumption and systemic ignorance in the good ole’ US of A. It’s difficult to call Felix a protagonist, more so just a character caught up in a collage of ultraviolence that borders on the poetic. His antithesis comes in the form of Samson Thataway, (or perhaps Samson is just a purer embodiment of the population of Dreamfield). Thataway is the Man in uber-black leading a band of not only blood thirsty,but blood-parched, clone-like men on a homicidal death trip. He and the Fuming Garcias “suck[s] the meat out of life and crap[s] it into a dirty ashtray.” Computer Cleanser addicted, decayed and homicidal, Samson has come to town as an almighty unholy flood of flesh rending and tissue tearing rape-o-matic terror. Felix Soandso’s “lover” Helen is caught in the flood of Samson and his men and it’s then up to Felix to exact retribution. Or perhaps not.

Meanwhile all around them society loses its collective shit as nature conspires against them, hogs are torn in two by hand and wave after wave after wave after wave of gun shot, chainsaw, and knife wound victims succumb to the darkest parts of the human psyche.

Peckinpah is written with the frenetic pace of a schizoid-savant cranked on dexedrine driving an alcohol fueled funny car across the Nevada salt flats while attempting to make a collage out of pornography, Intouch magazine and stills from 30 years of ultra-violent Horror and Western films. This shortish (coming in at 115 pages) burst of excess teems with sensual text that drips like the sweat of the back of a pervert in a Bangkok whorehouse. Words are strung together like the infinite mass of billboards that run and dot the highways and by-ways of America and we pass them in picoseconds hardly absorbing much more than a greasy smile across the lips of a buxom young co-ed. For Wilson, it’s A-more-ica. A place of filth and dollar stores and “8lb bowel movements.”

The only issues this reader took with the work were the digressions into critical film analysis. The examination of Peckinpah’s influence on film as taken from Savage Cinema: Sam Peckinpah and the Rise of Ultraviolent Movies, by Stephen Prince was unnecessary. If the author doesn’t need to explain in text film and culture references, then the reader should be left to glean information from the fucking title and do a little leg-work of her own and find out just who the Hell Sam – Fucking – Peckinpah was. I’m glad Wilson is such a fan but this was an example where his academic background was an unnecessary hindrance on the work as a whole.

In the end, the book is an acid soaked ride through America’s filthy billboard mass consumption heartlands on the back of a souped up chainsaw and I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in literature on the edge, taking up space usually left for drunken angry desperate film-makers of the late 1970s and early 80′s.

Go here for more on D. Harlan Wilson

- Willie

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by Violet Dear

When I woke up on November 27/2008 in the remote Himachal Pradesh town of Chamba, I was greeted by the news that every Indian dreads: late the previous night Pakistani terrorists had attacked Mumbai, entering 11 different locations around the city armed with AK47s and grenades, killing 200 people. Once I determined that my partner (working in Mumbai at the time) was safe, I sat down in shock.
Not in shock at the bombing and fires at the 5 star Taj.
Not in shock at the hostage situation at the Trident Hotel.
Not even at the shootings at a maternity hospital.
I was in the most shock over Leopold’s and the 10 shot dead on its premises.

Leopold’s Bar is an institution in Mumbai. It opened its doors in 1871 and is still a popular expat and backpacker hangout today, featured in every guide book and travel show made about crazy Bombay – The Maximum City. It hosts a mix of douchebag hippies on their way to party in Goa, young urban professionals here to celebrate merger completions and red nosed Western ex-patriots escaping their demons. But it has only been in the last few years that a pint at Leo’s has become a requisite stop for EVERY literate motherfucker arriving in Bollywood, thanks to Shantaram.

It’s one of those books that are always found in backpacker neighbourhoods in Asia – Shantaram is by far the book of choice for India. Every second traveler has a finger wedged in this 900 page monster, in whose pages Leopold’s is mentioned so often that it is practically a main character.

It is because of the backpacker connection that I thought I would hate this book, as backpackers generally have their head so far up their asses that they are willing to enjoy life’s most irritating experiences – ie: drum circles, hackey sacking, eachother…. But I didn’t – despite not believing a single word that was written on the page.

Shantaram is the auto-biographical fictionalized account of Gregory David Roberts (Lin), an escaped Aussie convict who arrives in India as a fleeing criminal, and ends up “White outside, Indian inside.” It is a pretty fantastical tale, filled with do-gooding in the slums and seedy underbelly-slithering as Lin becomes entrenched in this huge crazy putrid beautiful city.

Does my doubt of Roberts account affect the enjoyment? At times, yes – when I can’t help but roll my eyes as his quick thinking saves yet another life – call it “A Million Little Pieces” syndrome.

Regardless of my cynicism, the first half of the book is a joyous experience, a page turner that tugged every emotion I have while making me laugh out loud. Laugh hard out loud – which is rare for me from anything other than good conversation with my closest friends. Roberts is an expert at painting a vivid picture – even before arriving in Mumbai I felt like I knew the city intimately. Prabaker (Prabhu) is Lin’s guide and friend and he is equal parts heart and humour – the narrative suffers accordingly when he is out of the picture for too long.

Lin’s experiences with Indian culture are also spot on – Roberts manages to pinpoint both the irritating and the amazing without veering into condescension, which once here and confronted by the oft-illogical way this country operates can be hard to do. There is a palpable appreciation and respect for the suffering of the many abject poor who live in this city.

On the other hand, when in the second half of the book Lin heads to Afghanistan to fight with the mujahadeen and then delves further into organized crime I felt the narrative was a bit rehearsed, a cross between Mr. Nice and an Indian version of the Sopranos (The Hijras?) The last third of the book is befallen by a plague of serious introspection that becomes a bit tedious – we are forced to revisit the same issues again and again as Lin struggles with unrequited love and family dysfunction. These are interesting subjects no doubt, but I simply didn’t care about them in this book – the action surrounding Lin was much more enthralling. All in all, Shantaram would have benefited had Roberts learned to self edit – 700 pages would have sufficed quite nicely.

Despite the fact that the narrative is a bit muddled at times, what is obvious is that Roberts genuinely loves India and its people, and he thinks that Leopold’s Bar is a perfect metaphor for the mix of East and West that is Mumbai. Apparently this was also obvious to the Pakistani terrorists.

As for Lin’s improbable life in India? Perhaps the media blitz that is sure to occur the minute the film version (starring Johnny Depp) is released will uncover definitively what here is true and what is embellished – but until then I remain convinced that Roberts is either a saint or a good liar.

He wove a very good tale either way.

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Violet Dear can often be found walking on all four corners of the Earth and writes a badass travel blog detailing her adventures. We were particular moved by her accounts of Tuol Seng Prison in Cambodia.

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