Middling Thrillers
SCHNEIDER, HOWARD
Middling Thrillers Vital Statistics By Thomas Chastain Times. 192 pp. $8.95. Deathwork By James McLendon Lippincott. 336 pp. $8.95. Reviewed by Howard Schneider The first of these two...
...Solid oak, with a grain that arched out in ribs that formed garbled zigzag patterns that made no sense...
...I have no doubt, though, that the process would be much as McLendon describes it: If you want to know about the nuts and bolts of electrocution, in other words, this is the book for you...
...The tile floor under the chair was covered with thick, black, ribbed rubber like that of the chair's seat...
...Everything.' " The author's picture of political connivance and manipulation is weak and unconvincing, too...
...The relentlessly terse prose also can give you a headache: "Lieutenant Cortez returns...
...Edward Balfe, Senior—is sitting on the side of the bed...
...He is very good, however, at portraying the routines and rhythms of prison life and the paraphernalia of "old sparkie...
...I haven't thought about that in years.' " 'I know,' he replied, avoiding her eyes...
...The chill comes from seeing the death chair as simply a chair...
...Everything is beginning to seem empty...
...Here, for example, is his description of the electric chair: It "was like no other chair ever made...
...Deathwork is peopled with imitations of real persons (Norman Mailer and Tom Wicker, among others) who are so badly drawn it's embarrassing...
...Incidentally, current events have caught up with Kruger, the beach boy who is sentenced to the chair for rape, since the Supreme Court has apparently forbidden the death penalty in rape cases...
...There are four of them—a white woman, a white beach boy, an upperclass Cuban emigre, and a black Haitian— and none rings true...
...While I've never been absolutely convinced that New York City is the modern equivalent of Dante's Inferno, sordidness and corruption do wonders for holding the attention...
...James McLendon's Deathwork is about what might happen if the state of Florida began electrocuting condemned prisoners again...
...The armrests were irregular Ts, and there was a final T at the bottom of the third leg, a pillory for the ankles...
...It's time to think about leaving,' he added...
...There was a high back with four ribs down to the broad seat that was covered with thick, finely ribbed black rubber...
...She was beaten to death, all right, according to his preliminary opinion...
...only the secondary characters have enough eccentricities to be amusing...
...Reviewed by Howard Schneider The first of these two thrillers, Vital Statistics, has as its hero J.T...
...From here, the plot sickens: There are murders, double-crosses, mysteries, and views of the high- and low-life of the city...
...they don't talk—they make speeches...
...McLendon does better with the ordinary types, like the chief guard, McPeters, whose whole life is prisons and their inhabitants, and the fussy electrician who attaches people to the electric chair as he would screw as light bulb into a socket...
...Leather straps padded the insides of the ankle cups...
...Everything about it exuded evil...
...He should have stuck with what he does well...
...She has her arms crossed over her chest, her body is rigid, and her eyes are staring sightlessly into space...
...He says, 'Jesus, somebody sure dumped on her, from what the assistant M.E...
...All wood...
...It was sterile and inflexible, yet totally physical...
...It seems unlikely that there will be many more executions, despite the recent Supreme Court ruling allowing them: Public killings are rather stark, and Americans like their brutality glazed with entertainment...
...Still, the sex and violence draw you into the plot...
...But McLendon was too ambitious: He wanted to present an interlocking portrait of society using the executions as a focus, and he fails badly...
...The condemned prisoners are not much of an improvement...
...Vital Statistics is not in the class of Lawrence Sanders' The Second Deadly Sin—the best popular crime novel I've read in recent years—but it's good enough to make you want to see how it turns out...
...The narrative is in the present tense, which is annoying: "The old woman—Mrs...
...At the center of the high back, two vertical spikes waited as a headrest...
...The only wrong notes are the first two sentences...
...There were wrist straps, a waist strap, a chest strap...
...Along with some other stuff.' " Chastain's obsessive concern with describing objects and his lack of emotion are reminiscent of Robbe-Grillet, who is not the best person to be reminiscent of for an author interested in maintaining a lively atmosphere...
...He is driving into Manhattan over the Queensboro Bridge one night when a car races ahead of him and dumps a mutilated corpse onto the road...
...McLendon's style is banal: " 'The house seems so empty now that the children are all gone.' She tried a small half smile...
...A chair with only three legs, giving the false impression that it was rearing like a bucking horse...
...Spanner, a prototypical hard-boiled private eye...
...These figures become mouthpieces for ideas and attitudes (naive liberalism, skeptical liberalism, tough conservatism, etc...
...His face is grim...
...It was bolted to the floor, all twenty-one broad slats that made it a chair...
...says...
...Worse, his detective is dull and largely one-dimensional...
...The climax of the book—the encroaching horror of the executions— is powerful...
...The next day, Spanner is hired by a woman to find her missing daughter, who may or may not be the body on the bridge...
...as it is, the vividness of his best work is flattened by unpersuasive characterizations and phony moral posturing...
Vol. 61 • January 1978 • No. 2
