- Hardcover: 249 pages
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (21 Jan 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0747542775
- ISBN-13: 978-0747542773
- Product Dimensions: 20.8 x 14.6 x 2.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 4,328,928 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
If you like brainy dames, rivalling hoods and sharp-tongued hacks all heading for the heist to end all heists against a noir as night backdrop in 1950s Chicago then The House of Whacks is for you. Young British writer, Matthew Branton, can do graceful epic prose, he just choses not to. He spreads his talent for convincing, meaty motivations out among smart-girl Susan who's an SM model in the eponymous House; Ben, her ticket to mollhood; Misty, a tough cookie who's dying of cancer and closing up her pulp fiction outfit; and Lucky, a screenwriter playing soldier for "field detail" in Korea. But the biggest character is America itself--its slang, pop culture and the casualties of its dream machine. It is also about writers, those squeezed out by McCarthy or sexism and now by TV which is forcing career rethinks as fast as IT has done in the nineties. Each character fears becoming part of "America's real invention--a mass of undignified poor, who're never going to learn to tolerate anyone because they despise themselves." Although Branton uses the story within a story device once too often and the pace is a little jerky, the gritty, idiomatic prose is injected with fresh perky humour and the climax pops full of surprises. --Cherry Smyth
Product Description
Set in 1950s Chicago, this novel tells the story of three perfect heists - all on the same day and in the same place - involving a S&M supermodel, a legendary horror novelist, a screenwriter stuck in a warzone, a McCarthy-blacklisted cinematographer-turned pornographer, and a heap of Nazi gold.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a book whose premise I liked better than the actual execution. The idea of 1950s Chicago, an actress turned S&M model (think Betty Page), mobsters, a dying tough-girl editor, hack pulp writers, a struggling screenwriter, and a heist of Nazi gold, sounds great, but fails to hold together. Branton expends so much effort on recreating the hard-boiled setting and slang that the plot zigs and zags all over the place with annoying time shifts and a disappointing denouement. It might have been more compelling had Branton stuck with one or two main characters and went a little deeper into their lives, and paid a little more attention to plot (for example, the various heist plans are bafflingly stupid). ...The 1950s dialogue is occasionally marred by 1990s expressions, and more irritatingly, by Anglicisms that the editor should have easily caught.
Format:Paperback
I was a little disappointed with this as his first book really seemed to have something to say, but I would say that even this is better than most pulp fiction.
The difference is the first book had better more credible characters this a pastiche really.
The first book is so goods that he is still one to watch.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
9 reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Branton Whacks it Home
14 Dec 1999
Format:Paperback
Branton Whacks it Home Reviewer: Shawn M. Vidmar from Pueblo, Colorado Matthew Branton's ingenious novel, *House of Whacks*, brings the pulp detective novel into the 90's. His characters are intriguing and interesting. He introduces them so completely, and yet subtly that the reader finds herself not only caring about their story, but able to tell them apart without the tale-tell dialog tag lines. Each one is developed so carefully throughout the book that I never had to go back and remind myself who was who and why they were there.
In this post McCarthy hearing time frame, he develops heroes and heroines that are brassy, bold and resolute. They have separate and definable motives of survival.
Through vigilant structure and brilliant story telling, Branton is able to craft a book similar in detail and stylishness to the Academy Award Winning *LA Confidential*. The flash bulbs pop and crackle. The pornographic camera whirs and chunks. Wayward women find themselves in the thick of an underground studio, which is in turn involved in some other seedy business threatening everyone's life. And yet, through the dark humor and active bumblings of some characters, all threads of the story culminate in a dazzling resolution that will whack your socks off.
He brings the film noir detective fiction to light, a lost art in my opinion. A great read for any fan of noir.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
A blast of a book
14 July 2008
Format:Paperback
I don't buy the maxim, "never judge a book by its cover". The House of Whacks by Matthew Branton has a great one, and Bettie Page's presence on it is the reason I picked the book up in the first place.
Branton's also chosen a great setting for his multiple plot thread caper novel: Chicago in 1950.
One story involves Susan, a Bettie Page composite posing for soft core bondage shots at a "studio" called the House of Whacks. The place is owned by Giotto, one of the city's two mob bosses, and the one who's trying to go legit. Susan quickly falls in love with Ben Kahane, Giotto's right-hand man. Meanwhile, Misty, soon to be ex-editor of a dying horror pulp magazine, herself dying of cancer, cooks up a plot to rob Giotto's mob of a shipment of Nazi gold being trucked in from who-knows-where for distribution around the country. Misty enlists the aid of the best men she knows: her stable of hack writers who've cooked up thousands of heist plots for the pulps over the years. The third storyline involves Lucky, hack screenwriter who, after his stuntwoman girlfriend Lucy's career-ending accident, loads them both into his car and drives to Chicago to give their mob-connected producer a piece of his mind.
Aside from some anachronistic expressions (I doubt "tech-head" was in use in 1950) and some poorly researched geography this is a blast of a book. It's closer in spirit to one of Donald E. Westlake's caper novels than it is to a James Ellroy book (to which it's been compared). The dialogue rings true and the sleazy setting of the House of Whacks is convincingly portrayed.
Branton's also chosen a great setting for his multiple plot thread caper novel: Chicago in 1950.
One story involves Susan, a Bettie Page composite posing for soft core bondage shots at a "studio" called the House of Whacks. The place is owned by Giotto, one of the city's two mob bosses, and the one who's trying to go legit. Susan quickly falls in love with Ben Kahane, Giotto's right-hand man. Meanwhile, Misty, soon to be ex-editor of a dying horror pulp magazine, herself dying of cancer, cooks up a plot to rob Giotto's mob of a shipment of Nazi gold being trucked in from who-knows-where for distribution around the country. Misty enlists the aid of the best men she knows: her stable of hack writers who've cooked up thousands of heist plots for the pulps over the years. The third storyline involves Lucky, hack screenwriter who, after his stuntwoman girlfriend Lucy's career-ending accident, loads them both into his car and drives to Chicago to give their mob-connected producer a piece of his mind.
Aside from some anachronistic expressions (I doubt "tech-head" was in use in 1950) and some poorly researched geography this is a blast of a book. It's closer in spirit to one of Donald E. Westlake's caper novels than it is to a James Ellroy book (to which it's been compared). The dialogue rings true and the sleazy setting of the House of Whacks is convincingly portrayed.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Disappointing Muddle
7 May 2001
Format:Paperback
This is a book whose premise I liked better than the actual execution. The idea of 1950s Chicago, an actress turned S&M model (think Betty Page), mobsters, a dying tough-girl editor, hack pulp writers, a struggling screenwriter, and a heist of Nazi gold, sounds great, but fails to hold together in the end. Branton expends so much effort on recreating the hard-boiled setting and slang that the plot zigs and zags all over the place with annoying time shifts and a disappointing denouement. It might have been more compelling had Branton stuck with one or two main characters and went a little deeper into their lives, and paid a little more attention to plot (for example, the various heist plans are bafflingly stupid). While comparisons with LA Confidential aren't totally off base, Leonard's book is big league material, and this is strictly wanna-be. The 1950s dialogue is occasionally marred by 1990s expressions, and more irritatingly, by Anglicisms that the editor should have easily caught.
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