The Girl In The Trunk

The Girl In The Trunk, by Bruce Cassiday

July, 1973  Ace Books

I have this lame tradition I’ve started over the years: each summer I read a grimy ‘70s crime novel – ie, Bronson: Blind Rage, Death List, Framed, and etc. And now The Girl In The Trunk, which presents itself as being right up there (or down there) with the rest of them. Ironically I picked this one up several years ago but never read it, and over these past few years when I’ve been searching high and low for some new sleazy ‘70s crime kick, the book’s been sitting there neglected in a box. 

I should’ve known already that the book might have what I wanted: I mean for one thing there’s the striking (and uncredited) cover art, which is enough to raise one’s hackles. Then there’s the back cover copy, which is like Gannon or Stryker in how it tries to warn off potential readers, given the violent nature of its protagonist: “His fellow detectives on the Honolulu force didn’t like Egan. They couldn’t stomach his sick brutality, the unholy glee with which he trapped and roughed-up mugging suspects, and other victims for his sadistic fists.” So yes, we’re certainly in that grimy ‘70s crime paperback sweet spot, only one with an unusual setting: whereas most these types of books take place in New York or somewhere equally grimy, The Girl In The Trunk is set in sunny Honolulu. 

The novel also occurs over the course of a single day, which is another difference from the average crime paperback of the day. Author Bruce Cassiday keeps the momentum moving over the 200+ pages of the narrative, even skillfully working in the mounting tension of a tsunami that’s headed for Hawaii. The book opens with an 8.9 earthquake in Chile, and periodically the narrative cuts over to the officials monitoring the situation and the tsunamis that have arisen in its wake, with one of them bearing directly for Honolulu. And that’s another difference: The Girl In The Trunk, despite being packaged as a lone wolf cop thriller, is actually more of an ensemble piece, focused on a wide range of characters. This makes the book similar to some of the crime bestsellers of the day, a la The Anderson Tapes and The Taking Of Pelham 123. 

Lt. Jim Egan, a tough cop in his 40s, gets the back cover credit, but really he’s just one character of many: The Girl In The Trunk is more of a police procedural mixed with a disaster story than the gory yarn promised by the cover art and back cover copy. Egan’s story has it that his wife Berenice was murdered by muggers years before, and now Egan, a “freelance” agent for the Criminal Investigations Department, hunts down muggers to even the score. We meet him in this regard, coming out of a bar at 2:55AM on August 7th and being waylaid by a pair of muggers who think he’s a hapless tourist. But then when their knives come out Egan swoops into action, beating them merciless with his fists and feet. His reputation so precedes him that even the muggers are aware who he is, as are the disgusted cops who come by to round up the mauled muggers. Unlike Gannon or Bronson, Egan is still a cop, thus we learn he’s yet to actually kill any of his victims. 

Then there’s Toshi Yonomuro, 51 year-old chief of CID and Egan’s boss; a Hawaiian-born Japanese with an artificial left cheek that was grafted on after some Germans blew the real one off during WWII. Toshi has his share of the narratiev, as do his wife Blossom and their daughter, Lehua, a college-aged “radical” who has big plans for the rally that night, and claims her dad’s warnings of an impending tsunami are just typical “bourgeois fear” to keep the subversives confused. Both of these characters will carry a good bit of the plot, as does another officer, Ki, a 26 year-old who is “the most cerebral” guy on Toshi’s force and ultimately works the titular case with Egan. 

So just to reiterate, the sadistic tale promised by the cover and copy is only partly delivered on; we meet Egan while beating up some muggers, as mentioned, but he kills neither. We learn he’s now beaten 16 muggers since his wife was killed by one, but this backstory isn’t much elaborated on other than to show that Egan is pretty damn nuts. A few times in the story he will start seeing his dead wife’s face and get dizzy and consumed with violent anger. But other than that he’s just a dick, making a lot of racist comments about Hawaiians and “old Hawaii;” Egan came here before WWII, and often goes on how Hawaii was so much better before it became a state – something with which Toshi also agrees. 

For that’s another layer of the busy story: the various tiers of what is and isn’t a Hawaiian. Ie the native Hawaiians, those with Japanese heritage, those with Caucasian heritage, and those that are mixtures of the above. Then there are also lineages of whether one is “native born Japanese-Hawaiian” or whatnot. But as one of the characters muses, none of it really matters. Cassiday clearly was familiar with Hawaii and really brings the locale to life, as well as the festering racial hostilities and resentments. He even graces the narrative with some smatterings of Japanese, most of which reads correctly (fun fact: I studied Japanese in college and spent a semester in Tokyo). But this whole “race” angle is just one of the many subplots: police procedural, impending disaster, escaped convict, and even radical politics. 

The latter element is how Toshi’s daughter plays into the narrative: she’s been dating Danny, the leader of the Young People’s Family, a group of college-age radicals who want to split off from the Mainland and restore the “real” Hawaii. Here we get a peek into the radical movement mindset of the day, as well as the interesting revelation that at this point the hippies now called themselves “Earth people,” or at least so is Toshi’s belief. So Cassiday even works in a generational divide layer to the novel. He also displays how, no matter their age or race, radicals are a despicable lot: Lehua happens to be pregnant, and when she happily reveals this to Danny he responds that he’ll be glad to raise the kid, but he will be a “bastard,” because “the movement demands purity,” thus Danny can only marry a native Hawaiian. Of course this doesn’t go over very well with Lehua. 

As mentioned The Girl In The Trunk takes place over a single day, August 7 (year unstated), so there isn’t any opportunity for seeing how big revelations play out over time. It’s actually curious that Cassiday went for this “single day” setup, as there was plenty of room for him to flesh out the story more, particularly given the many plots. As it is, he injects a mounting tension with frequent cutaways to various one-off characters as they track the impending tsunami and put out the appropriate alerts. Interestingly one of these one-off characters happens to be “the second announcer” at a “hard rock FM station,” but Cassiday buzzkills any opportunity for fun here with the comment that the DJ is “over thirty” and thus “secretly hates hard rock!” 

So the vengeful cop leaving a trail of mauled corpses in his wake is a story that never happens in The Girl In The Trunk. Instead the main storyline has to do with the embezzlement of half a million dollars from a firm called Dill and Fox; the suspected party was a comptroller named Ames, and Egan and Ki will spend the rest of the novel hunting for him. One subplot, gradually minimized due to the impending threat of the tsunami, is that Toshi is concerned Egan’s mugger-maulings will make it into the news, the force of course not needing the bad press, but he still puts Egan on this Dill and Fox case because he’s “a good detective.” 

One questions Toshi’s opinion when Egan – who remember just beat up two muggers a few hours ago – is sent to the home of Ames, where Egan interviews the man’s attractive, middle-aged wife…and gawks over how she’s a ringer for Berenice, his dead wife. Mrs. Ames turns out to be rather poised for someone whose husband apparently just absconded with half a million bucks, and she trades some memorable barbs with Egan. Meanwhile Ki and even Toshi meet with various firm reps, lending the novel much more of a procedural tone than what the reader might’ve been expecting; in fact I wonder if Ace retitled and repackaged Cassiday’s novel to be more in-line with the violent thrillers then populating the bookstore shelves (or spinner racks). 

Indeed, the titular “girl in the trunk” is discovered early on in the novel, by a beach bum who comes upon a Datsun in the Honolulu Air Port parking lot, some stray dog trying to get into the trunk. Inside the bum sees a dead blonde, completely nude, but he rushes off (the dog tagging along), not willing to call in the discovery. Later though it’s found and Toshi and team go out to the airport while the ME examines; Cassiday furthers the procedural tone with a lot of real-world detail on corpse “lividity” and etc. Here we learn that the dead blonde was the mistress of Ames, the runaway comptroller. In the course of their investigation (ie, over the next few hours), the detectives will learn that Ames’s boss at the firm was also involved in an affair…with Mrs. Ames. 

Along the way we also have repercussions from Egan’s opening mugger-mauling; Toshi interrogates the two “victims,” a bit surprised that one of them seems so blasé about his upcoming jail time. Later (ie just a few hours later) the mugger escapes while being transported to jail, lending the novel yet another tangent: the fugitive on the run. This guy runs roughshod through Honolulu, taking advantage of the growing paranoia over the upcoming tsunami – which has now been determined to make landfall by evening. Cassiday throws around all kinds of curveballs here, with the escaping mugger running into various characters from the narrative. He also doles out a surprise reveal that I won’t spoil on who the mugger really is. 

Action is infrequent; other than the opening bit with Egan, we have a tussle or two, and a gory death when the mugger makes his escape during the transport. For a guy presented as so brutal, Egan doesn’t fare very well; there are two parts where his attacker nearly gets the better of him. That said, at one point he gets his hands on a guy and is about to kill him – again flashing on his dead wife’s face – and is only stopped by Ki. But the cops are very skittish about pulling their guns and shooting, even though Egan likes to constantly threaten people he’s about to. Again, it’s all more of a “realistic” procedural than a violent actioner. 

Cassiday loops all the threads in the finale, which of course sees the tsunami making landfall just as our heroes square away the case and apprehend the escaped mugger. Cassiday even works in Lehua’s plight; one of the subplots is her concern over telling her dad she’s pregnant. Our author manages to give this subplot a happy ending, but again we don’t know how much it will pan out, given that the story occurs over a single day. Cassiday’s focus is more on displaying the various dynamics of Honolulu and its people, and in this regard he really brings the locale to life. 

I wouldn’t say The Girl In The Trunk is a sleazy crime yarn along the lines of the others I’ve reviewed here, though you may be fooled into thinking it is by the cover. If anything it proves that Cassiday was a virtual chameleon so far as his writing goes, so prolific that he wrote everything from historical sagas (The Phoenician, which I got years ago but still haven’t read) to the final installments of Mace.

Mace #7: The Year Of The Cock

Mace #7: The Year Of The Cock, by C.K. Fong
No month stated, 1975  Manor Books

It’s curious that with this seventh volume of Mace Manor came up with a new house name: C.K. Fong replacing Lee Chang. I say curious because Bruce Cassiday, the writer who took over the series with this volume, clearly strives to mimic the style of Joseph Rosenberger, who served as Lee Chang for the first five volumes, whereas Len Levinson, who also served as Lee Chang in the previous volume, did his own thing. I know from Len that he never read any of the previous Mace novels, nor even knew who Joseph Rosenberger was (his succinct answer when I asked him: “I never heard of Joseph Rosenberger”), but it seems clear that Cassiday not only read Rosenberger’s Mace installments but went out of his way to replicate his style. 

All of which is to say The Year Of The Cock is ersatz Rosenberger; Cassiday successfully captures the flavor of JR’s clunky, soul-crushing narrative style, but he misses the oddball touches Rosenberger afficionados would expect. But the bland plotting, the egregious bios of one-off villains, the interminable action scenes that don’t have a single spark of excitement – all of it’s there. If I hadn’t known going in that Cassiday was Fong, I would’ve assumed it was Rosenberger on an off day. I don’t know much about Cassiday, and so far on the blog I’ve only reviewed one of his novels, the earlier psychedelic cash-in The Happening At San Remo. I have several other paperbacks of his, ranging from historicals to sleazy crime, so I assume he must’ve been pretty prolific and capable of changing his style to match the content.

In any event, Len’s novel is basically a blip and, in case there was any doubt, has nothing to do with the series itself, best judged as a standalone novel about some other half-Chinese kung fu wizard named Victor Mace. Because Cassiday gives us the same guy that Rosenberger did, a “Kung Fu Monk-Master” who works for the CIA and is capable of superhuman feats but has the personality of a thumbtack. Cassiday might give us a slightly more “human” Mace, in that this one actually has a libido (usually a much-lacking feature in a Rosenberger protagonist); there’s a part midway through where he falls for a honey trap scenario and has some (off-page) sex with a young Chinese babe. I don’t think the Rosenberger version of Mace would’ve had this experience.

It’s straight to the action and the egregious backstories for one-off opponents as we meet Mace in Galveston, Texas, where he’s busy tying himself to a motor boat that’s speeding across a dark bay. Mace we’ll learn is on his latest CIA assignment, looking into the nefarious presence of a Red Chinese cell here in Texas, one that’s led by a dude named Major Fong (who is compared to both Hitler and Frankenstein!). Curious too that “Fong” is the name of the villain as well as the name of the (fictional) author, leading me to believe that Cassiday was unaware that the house name for the series would change. But then, this opening action scene takes place at “Bruce’s Fishing Charter,” which is likely some in-jokery from Cassiday, so who knows. Oh and there’s the possibility that Fong might’ve killed Mace’s father, who we learn in brief backstory was American – it was his Chinese stepfather who sent Mace to the Shaolin school – but Cassiday basically drops this angle.

Mace quickly learns that it’s a setup, and the thugs on the boat have known he was here all along. They corner him and it goes straight into the Rosenberger-style action, with random asides detailing the goofily-named opponents Mace is about to crush. As with Rosenberger this results in a clunky, pseudo-omniscient tone, a tone Cassiday employs throughout the book:

Nick Bartolomew was next to join the surging attack on the Kung Fu Monk-Master. Armed with a twelve inch flyssa, a Moroccan sword characterized by a single-edged blade engraved and inlaid with brass, Bartolomew slid it histily[sp] from the scabbard he wore around his waist and came at Mace with a wild glare. 

“Your last breath on earth, you chink son of a bitch!” he yelled, and slid the deadly blade upward toward Mace’s groin. But the Kung Fu Tung-chi had anticipated the black-haired ex-con’s move with the blade, and countered by whirling around with a simple Korsi Tu Minga kick to the crotch. 

Shrieking in agony, Bartolomew sagged to the deck, his sexual apparatus a mass of jelly instantly radiating pain from its ruined center to every nerve ending in his body. As he fell, the ugly flyssa impaled him in the heart as he sank down face first. He twisted and tore at the deck plates with his bleeding fingernails as he slowly lost consciousness and died in the lashing rain.

Or this example:

An ex-hood named Pinky Desnoyers was the next who reacted with dispatch. An albino, he dyed his hair red to make himself presentable to his fellow man. Desnoyers went nowhwere without a snubnosed S and W .45 caliber revolver clipped to his shoulder holster.

Or:

“Make sure he’s dead!” yelled Sam Riley, known as One-Ball Riley ever since he had been partially maimed by the disgruntled husband of a floozie he had been caught with in bed one eventful evening.

One thing Cassiday actually outdoes Rosenberger on is the racial slurs. Not since the first volume has “chink,” “slant-eyes,” and sundry other racial putdowns appeared so many times in a Mace novel. Cassiday even comes up with wholly new ones, like “noodle-nibbler.” In fact there’s a long stretch where an Asian slur appears on every single page, as if Cassiday were trying to outdo himself. And it’s not just the villains coming up with the slurs, it’s everyone – cops, fellow CIA agents, etc. This opening action scene is our intro to this, as the seemingly-endless parade of thugs come up with slur after slur before Mace’s feet or fists pummel them into bloody burger. But as with Rosenberger there’s no joy in the action, and it just comes off like an interminable barrage of description from a martial arts how-to book. Cassiday does though try to retain the occasional goofy cap-offs for his action scenes, a la “The goon woke up and found himself in hell,” sort of thing you’d find in a Rosenberger Mace. Like this, from a later action scene:

The goon in the middle stormed in to deliver a Karate chop to the back of Mace’s neck. His hand connected, and Mace rolled with the punch. Immediately he recovered, forcing his muscles and his psyche to regroup in a positive chi effort. Instantly he was clear-headed and alert, backing around, wheeling slightly, and clobbering the man called Hank Grogan with a Dragon Foot snap kick in the solar plexus. The ball of the foot and the heel slammed into Grogan’s nerve centers, paralyzing him instantly and sending him crumpling to the ground. His abdominal wall collapsed and he was bleeding internally when they finally put him in the ambulance and sent him to Houston General. He recovered seven weeks later, but he was on soft foods for the rest of his life.

So as you can see, one could easily be fooled into believing this was the work of Joseph Rosenberger, and Cassiday does an admirable job of aping his unusual style. But sadly he is so successful that The Year Of The Cock (the working title of my autobio, btw) is just as boring as a legit Rosenberger book, 222 whopping pages of spirit-deadening blocks of prose and hardly any narrative momentum. There’s plentiful kung-fu fighting, though, but as with Rosenberger’s books it just comes off like dry textbook descriptions of outrageously-named moves being employed on outrageously-named thugs – thugs who spout outrageous racial slurs moments before their faces meet Mace’s feet.

The plot gradually centers around a Red Chinese plot to destroy the offshore oil rigs off the Houston coast. Mace sits through interminable meetings with his CIA comrades, the only memorable one being Benny Jaurez, the Houston chief of station. This too has the ring of Rosenberger, with the spooks sitting around in their humdrum office over cups of lukewarm coffee and trading exposition on the spy life (why a CIA ring is called a “pod,” etc). Eventually it comes to light that one of the various intelligence agents is a traitor, and there’s also an elaborate sting operation where Mace tries to out him. This bit leads to a surprise climax in which Mace, pursued by a dogged Houston cop who himself turns out to be a villain, is “rescued” by a hot young Chinese babe who pulls up in her sportscar and offers Mace a lift.

In what is as mentioned a departure from Rosenberger’s more cipher-like version of the character, this Mace actually goes back to the broad’s place and ultimately has sex with her. Her name’s Moon Chu Lingdoo, and she claims to be a string reporter for Time, currently working for the local PBS station. She says she’s “hopelessly Americanized” and there follows a lot of dialog between the two, concluding with Moon throwing herself on Mace, as she claims to be lonely. Off-page sex ensues, and Mace wakes up to discover, of course, that it was a setup – Moon is gone but some thugs have slipped into her darkened apartment to get the drop on him. Of course he kills them all and escapes without breaking much of a sweat.

In a laughable sequence Mace, again hanging out with Juarez, employs his total recall to review every single thing he glimpsed in Moon’s apartment, in particular the photo of a man on one of her tables. Mace and Juarez already know there’s a deep undercover spy for the Chinese government here in Houston, and Mace is certain this man in the photo is that undercover agent: Tom Galey, the director of programming for the Houston PBS station. I guess in 1975 it would’ve sounded crazy – maybe even impossible – that a member of the American media could be an undercover Red China asset. In 2020 it sounds downright timely. Mace of course is correct, and meanwhile Galey, who lives in a fortified compound, is busy arguing with Major Fong over how to carry out the operation on the oilwells, and also over whether or not they should kill Moon for failing in her mission. She attempts to escape, only to be raped (off-page) by a guard who captures her.

This leads to probably the “best” action scene in the book, with Mace infiltrating Galey’s compound and taking out a few guards, as well as some guard dogs with some hypodermic needles. He also manages to rescue Moon, aka the woman who nearly got him killed. Moon claims she didn’t know Mace was going to be attacked, etc, but she does give him and Juarez the info on the oilwell attack. This leads to the finale, with Mace and the CIA agents staging an assault on the PBS station, where it turns out Galey has set up a transmitter on the broadcasting tower. A signal from it and the offshore rigs will blow up. The climax is a bit gory, too, with Mace ripping out Galey’s eyes and shredding his throat, and another character performing some heroic sacrifice to both wipe out the transmitter and kill Major Fong.

And with this, thankfully, the book concludes…it’s too long, too wordy, too bland, but as I say it’s at least a successful mimicking of Joseph Rosenberger’s patented style. Only without the quirks that make the real Rosenberger’s work occasionally so memorable. Cassiday also turned in the next volume, which would prove to be the last of Mace.