Have you read a book called Sharky's Machine? I did a bit of research on it and discovered that it's by the same author who brought out Primal Fear.

I wonder if Laurie Anderson (remember her? With the electric violin and William S. Burroghs voice-overs in the 80s?) was celebrating this very work with her "Sharkey's Day." I once heard someone playing this peculiar piece in a college dorm once, and remembered the "Sharkey" part (though Anderson's use of the "e" suggests that she might be talking about someone else). Either way, it's a dreadful name for a character, but memorable, I'll give it that.

William Diehl, the author, seems entranced by the exotic but doesn't take much trouble to learn about his fetishes. He confuses Chinese and Japanese cultures with dizzying inconsistency, his stock Triad thugs responding to barked commands from their powerful Western masters (Tai Pan, anyone?) by saying "hai." In the book, Victor DeLaroza (not his real name, of course), a Portuguese crime lord living in Hong Kong (who turns out to be an American G.I.--by way of Switzerland) is obsessed with Chinese culture and starts up an amusement park--called Pachinko! (Diehl's exclamation point, not mine.) For those not familiar with it, pachinko is a Japanese game, a form of legalized gambling found throughout Tokyo and Japan's other major cities. The game consists of hundreds of little ball bearings that are dropped onto a vertical maze. If the balls lodge in specially marked conduits, the player wins money. Clouds of cigarette smoke and the smell of stale beer always accompany the rattle of thousands of little ball bearings in pachinko parlors, and the memory of that sound makes me shudder. Rarely have I heard anything more irritating.

Diehl's Pachinko! amusement park, which mercifully remains open to the public for only a few hours, includes a scale model of Hong Kong, including an animatronic fire-breathing dragon and other beasts that are used to re-enact the legend of Kowloon for the surprised guests. As if this weren't peculiar enough, for reasons known best and only to himself, DeLaroza has chosen to locate this amusement park within a skyscraper in downtown Atlanta, and lives in a penthouse directly above it. One hopes he isn't a late sleeper: the noise of roller coasters filled with screaming children can't be conducive to rest, much less the racket generated by the amusement park's signature ride (which we'll get to in a second). To say nothing of zoning regulations--surely those existed even in the Atlanta of the 1970s.

How on earth did I come by this weird book? In the lobby of my building, there is a table where mail too large for the mailboxes is left. Lately, some person has been leaving books there, presumably because he (or she) is finished with them and wishes to pass them on. While most of the books didn't interest me, I did find The Life of Pi there, and I have to admit that the cover of Sharky's Machine intrigued me, as did the title. I thought it might be science fiction. (I've returned the kindness of this anonymous book benefactor by leaving a couple of books there myself, one I didn't want any longer and also a copy of my own Garlands of Moonlight; although I suspect the reader would be more horrified by the idea that the author of that work lives in his building than by the content of the story.)

Lately I've been on such a streak of writing and travel (hence my silence here on this journal) that I've been indulging myself in the pleasure of a little non-research reading, and when I picked up Sharky's Machine I reasoned that nothing within a sci-fi novel would derail or unduly influence any of my current projects. But the book is not sci-fi at all, as I soon discovered. I make my way through books pretty quickly, so I was too deep into it to put it down once it became obvious that it was total and utter trash. This is a weakness I've discovered lately: I really can't resist finding out how stories, even bad ones, end.

Sharky's Machine was written in 1978, and is peppered with standard 70s-isms like the inevitable orgy of drugs and sex that begins with Quaaludes (delivered on a satin cushion, no less), continues on with opium, spirals unsteadily through cocaine (consumed from a mirror placed on the belly of a naked woman), and ends with absinthe. No human being could possibly survive the onslaught of drugs described, yet Diehl's characters show narry a hangover. Did I mention they also made their way through several bottles of wine? It's so excessive that one can only be impressed.

A bit of background. The title of the work refers to an investigation (a "machine") led by the stalwart Sharky, a rough Atlanta cop with a twitchy trigger finger. Sharky's troubles begin when a sting operation against a (male) drug dealer named High Ball Mary goes badly wrong. Sharky chases Mary through the streets of Atlanta. The criminal, though garbed in a fur coat, platform shoes, and encumbered by a pound of cocaine and lots of bling, makes it as far as a crowded bus, where Sharky shoots and kills him. Much to Sharky's dismay, the police captain finds all of this a little irresponsible and demotes him to the Vice Squad, which is located in a filthy basement and run by a foul-mouthed fellow named Friscoe (I swear I'm not making this up), who in turn presides over a group of characters that make High Ball Mary look positively conservative.

Apparently the Vice Squad, vying for some piece of police work to boost its stature amongst the other departments, has been putting together a blackmail investigation. It seems that a prostitute and her pimp are extorting money from a Texas oil man. Sharky goes over the investigation and discovers some interesting incongruities, and we are drawn into the shadowy underworld (god help me, I'm starting to write like William Diehl) of international crime lords who have karate-practicing Chinese henchmen. Chinese? Karate? I'm afraid so.

The book is filled with enough gross errors and stereotypes that it could be offensive, but the characterizations are so bad, the generalizations so grotesque, that it's funny. At least the insults are delivered with an even hand: Italians are subjected to the same level of slander as are the undifferentiated "Orientals," and the women featured in the tale are all prostitutes (except for one, a police widow, who works on the police force through the grace of an Afro-sporting Vice cop named Livingston). Two gay men who appear in the story are shown to be so utterly depraved that Diehl makes sure his characters riddle them with epithets. They're also either violently killed or arrested, to make sure the reader is satisfied that their unwholesomeness does not go unpunished. Diehl is clearly an unacknowledged influence of the vile and greatly overrated Quentin Tarrantino: the characters in "Pulp Fiction" could be quoting lines verbatim from a Sharkey's Machine bookie named "Zipper." The interior of Zipper's limousine:

The seats were upholstered in mauve velvet with gold buttons. The floor was covered in ankle-deep white shag carpeting. Built into the back of the front seat were two white telephones, a bar, and an icemaker. A bottle of Tattinger champagne sat on the bar shelf.

(Zipper's guest refuses the offer of some of this champagne, on the grounds that it might cause heartburn. Zipper's response is, "Heartburn! Man, that shit's fifty dollars a bottle. Ain't no fuckin' heartburn in this shit.") As for Zipper himself:

The man who sat in the corner arrogantly sipping champagne matched the decor. He was shorter than Livingston and looked younger, but he was beginning to show the signs of good living. His afro flared out, encircling his head like a halo, and his mustache was full and trimmed just below the corners of his mouth. He was wearing a dark blue pigskin jacket, rust-colored gabardine pants, and a flowered shirt open to the neck, the collar flowing out over the lapels of the jacket almost to his shoulders. Gold chains gleamed at his throat, diamonds twinkled on his fingers, and a gold Rolex watch glittered from under one cuff. His mirror-shined shoes were light tan with three-inch hardwood heels. A white handkerchief flopped casually from his breast pocket.

I was enchanted until the white handkerchief. That detail just ruins the whole thing, don't you agree?

What more can I say about this spectacularly awful work? The final chapter, the climax of all the bizarre events depicted and clearly written with every sincere effort to shock the reader, had me in stitches. Diehl's attempt to build suspense dissolves and fizzles like Alka Seltzer dropped into a glass of Perrier.

The stage is set as the evil Victor DeLaroza, our American-turned-Swiss-turned-Portuguese-turned-Chinese crime lord throws a big bash (black tie and costumes) celebrating the opening of his questionable Hong Kong-styled amusement park. Meanwhile an assassin turns on his employer, and our hero Sharky, now with a prostitute named Domino in tow, stakes out the party. Best to let Diehl's prose speak for itself. I'll jump in now and then to provide some context, since I have the dubious distinction of having stayed with this narrative through to the last page.

Enormous arc spotlights swept back and forth in front of Mirror Towers, their beams reaching up into a clear, star-filled sky. Live TV cameras rested on tripods beside a red carpet that stretched from the curb in front of the building to the blazing entrance to Pachinko!

Celebrities had started arriving at six for a cocktail party in DeLaroza's penthouse. The regular guests had begun arriving even earlier and now they began filing into the four elevators for the trip to the magic gates of the amusement atrium.

Newsmen crowded around Donald Hotchins

...who is a corrupt U.S. Senator backed by DeLaroza; the prostitute Domino was Hotchins' mistress, before she cottoned on to the fact that he was trying to have her assassinated lest she stand in the way of his political career, and now she works with Skarky to bring down Hotchins, DeLaroza, and a Sicilian assassin named Scardi. Did I mention that the plot of this book is Byzantine to the point of incomprehensibility? Although I must say that after reading it I feel much better about The Golden Vine. Back to the story:

as he got out of the black limousine. His wife, Elena, remained in the back seat as usual, waiting for the furor to die down. She hated the public spectacle, hated the press, hated everything about politics.

Hotchins seemed the perfect politico, his longish blond hair flopping casually over his forehead, his broad smile radiating sincerity. He seemed even taller and more handsome than usual in the elegance of a tuxedo.

As he got out of the car into a volley of popping flashbulbs and a phalanx of microphones, all thrust in has face, DeLaroza moved through the crowd of reporters to shake his hand.

"Is it true, Senator, that you're going to make an announcement later this evening?" one of them asked.

(I found myself hoping this would be the only spectacle planned for the evening...)

"Well, why don't we wait for a little while and see?" Hotchins said, still grinning. "By the way this is Victor DeLaroza. You ought to get to know him. You'll be seeing a lot of him in the future."

(DeLaroza's ambition in propelling Hotchins into the White House is to become a member of the cabinet, and thereby to emerge finally from the shadows. Sadly, the senator's hints of DeLaroza's increased visibility will prove to be premature. Hotchins' impending announcement, of course, is that he intends to run for the office of President of the United States. Sad that the caliber of people seeking entry into American government in recent times seems not too different from since Diehl's fictional 1978; look at what happened in 2000, and may recur in 2004.)

"So you are going to be making a statement then?" someone else asked.

"Wait another hour or so," Hotchins said good-naturedly. "I've never missed a deadline yet."

The press contingent laughed and moved back as the senator helped his wife from the sedan. She smiled coolly at DeLaroza, who nodded back and then led the Hotchinses along the red carpet toward Pachinko!

...

As they approached the entrance Hotchins saw through the crowd a woman standing near the doorway, her face inscrutable behind a waxen full-face mask with high, bright-red cheekbones and a thin slash of a mouth. She was wearing a gold full-length mandarin dress with a blazing red sun in the midsection and her eyes seemed to follow him through the slanted cutouts of the mask. He looked back as he entered the building. There was something disquieting about her.

The thing that's disquieting about her, of course, is the fact that she's none other than his mistress Domino, whom he had ordered killed just earlier. Luckily for our friend Sharky, who has taken up with this fallen woman, Domino's friend Tiffany (also a prostitute, naturally) was shot instead in a case of mistaken identities, though the villains are not yet aware of this fact.

And I too would be disturbed by the sight of a woman dressed in a gold "mandarin dress" with a red sun on it, peering at me from behind a "waxen full-face mask." In opening this fetishistic Pandora's box of poor taste, Diehl misses an opportunity to further confuse the cultures of the East: he could have made it a Kabuki mask to go with the "mandarin dress." And had her snacking on kimchi while she was at it. Shockingly, the characters (perhaps because they are living in the late 70s) have only admiration for Domino's ghastly outfit:

"So that's the pair," Sharky said, as the Hotchins party boarded one of the bullet-shaped elevators to be whisked up to DeLaroza's penthouse.

"He looked back at me," Domino said, her voice muffled by the mask. "I was afraid for a minute he might have recognized me."

"Maybe the gown attracted him," Sharky said. "It's gorgeous."

"It came from Hong Kong," she said.

"Now, why doesn't that surprise me?"

Though all the dialogue in this book is gruesome, I wondered at this last line. Why wasn't Sharky surprised? Was Diehl attempting to show the gown and its origins off as signs of Domino's sophistication? We'll never know.

They entered the lobby and mingled with the crowd waiting for the elevators to Pachinko! They were a strange couple, Sharky in his tweed suit and black eye mask, Domino in the shimmering gold gown, with the eerie waxen disguise covering her entire face.

You got that little detail, didn't you? The mask covers her entire face, lest she be noticed by the two men who have just ordered her execution (and who just passed within feet of her), one of whom was her lover.

"You sure you want to go through with this?" Sharky asked.

"Too late to stop now," she said.

(Echoing my own sentiments as I wondered why I was still reading.)

"Besides, I have a little getting even to do myself."

(Echoing my own sentiments as I vengefully write this, lamenting the time I spent reading this story, which I will never have back.)

The elevator opened at the top of Ladder Street and Sharky and Domino stepped out into a carnival of sight and sound.

Several hundred visitors had already arrived and the enormous atrium was crowded. Jugglers roved the steps of Ladder Street, tossing fire sticks back and forth. Music seemed to swell from every doorway. Traveling hucksters offered postcards and trinkets. The smell of barbecuing chicken and ribs drifted up from the food stalls.

"Look for Papa. He should be close to the top of the steps," Sharky said.

As I mentioned before, the amusement park is modeled after Hong Kong, and Ladder Street is one of the city's more famous markets. "Papa" is the nickname given to a member of the Vice Squad, because the characters can't manage his full Greek last name (which I must admit I also cannot remember).

The place made him nervous.

Doesn't it make you nervous too? An amusement park in the high floors of a skyscraper, filled with jugglers tossing burning sticks and barbecue all around, and the only way in or out is through elevators? There are yet more fire hazards, of an even more menacing character, which we will encounter momentarily.

Too big. Too many people. It was more dangerous than he had imagined.

And here we'll fast forward a little bit.

While our heroes explore Pachinko! in a state of awe, the gangster Scardi is annoyed that he has not been invited to the party. He obtains a clown outfit and puts it on, planning to crash incognito.

The wicked DeLaroza has ordered one of his Chinese henchmen to murder Scardi, and the attempt is nearly successful; Scardi is stabbed in the side with some sort of spike implement as he shoots the henchman. Now he's really determined to go to the party, though now less for the passed canapes than for simple revenge. After years of faithful service to DeLaroza, he realizes that he's about to be thrown out like a used Quaalude wrapper, and if he's going down, then so too must DeLaroza go down. Popping a couple of tablets of speed (which all the characters do at some point in the story), he staggers out into the party.

"I made you, you fat gutless sonofabitch..." he screamed aloud.

He opened the small box on the dresser. Three red devils left. He popped two in his mouth and swallowed them without water.

An instant later they jolted him, setting all his nerves on edge, intensifying the pain in his chest beyond bearing. He put the back of his hand over his mouth and screamed again.

Then it was gone, replaced by the soaring rush of the speed. It cleared his vision, replaced the pain with a pure and driving hate. He snapped the silencer on the ugly snout of the Woodsman and slipped it inside the clown suit. Then he took his invitation and headed for Pachinko!

Hotchins had beein introduced with glowing platitudes by the state's senior senator, Osgood Thurston. Hotchins's speech was short and to the point, a straightforward declaration that he was running for president and running to win, for the guests had come to play, not to listen to political speeches. The press would have his chance at him later at the press conference.

Five minutes, that's all it would take.

He was halfway through the announcement when he saw her for the first time. A face in the sea of masks, staring up at him, smiling cryptically.

He floundered, lost his place as panic seized him. He smiled at the crowd, regained his composure, and when he looked back, she was gone.

A moment later he saw her again, this time staring enigmatically from between the posters in a display in front of one of the booths.

Again, a few moments later, from farther down in the crowd.

...

Only DeLaroza read the fear in Hotchins's eyes.

He pulled him away as the furor died away.

"What is the matter with you?" DeLaroza demanded.

"She's down there," Hotchins said. He was trembling.

"What are you talking about?"

"She's in the crowd. She's leering at me!"

"Who?"

"Domino. She's here. In this place."

"You are going to pieces. She would never take such a chance."

"I'm telling you, Domino is out there. She's trying to rattle me and she did it."

It is indeed satisfying to hear of a politician being leered at, since the whole lot of them is long overdue for a taste of their own medicine.

It turns out that the clever Sharky has placed the mask on the back of Domino's head, turning her face-out when Hotchins looks their way, and then spinning her back around, mask side toward the senator, when he does a double-take. Sneaky! However, Diehl doesn't seem to consider the combined effect of the gaudy dress and "waxen mask," which surely would stand out in a crowd. Nevertheless.

For the grand finale, Sharky has devised an even more unnerving bit of theatrics. Just as Hotchins and DeLaroza step into the amusement park's most important ride, Domino will step forward and, in front of all the press photographers and rolling TV cameras, point out the pair of villains (who by this time will be helpless and strapped into the ride) and implicate them.

And just what is this fabulous ride after which the amusement park is named?

Evidently Diehl knew approximately what pachinko is, but didn't check into the details. His version--magnified to gigantic proportions--more resembles a giant pinball game (think The Who's Tommy) than the vertical reality of an actual pachinko board. The ride consists of a number of large, chrome balls into which the patrons are strapped. The very top of the ball is sheared off to expose the heads of the riders. The ball itself does not roll (which would decapitate its passengers--far too quick and merciful a deliverance form the excruciating hell of the amusement park), but rather glides over the floor on ball bearings. Yes, I had trouble imagining it too.

Once the riders are strapped in, the ball is pushed along and descends onto the tilted floor of the giant pinball game, bouncing crazily off statues of Chinese gods with strobe lights for eyes. An operator in a control booth can slow the balls down if they start rocketing along too fast, but other than this, no safety feature is mentioned. Now, 1970s notwithstanding, I can't imagine anyone crazy enough to partake of such an experience willingly. Yet dozens are queued up for the ride. Perhaps by this time in the story all the shops and fake scenery of Pachinko! have ceased to hold the attendees' interest--or maybe they, like the lead characters, have ingested enough drugs that even the horror of a pachinko ride does not frighten them.

Meanwhile, the gangster Scardi, still bleeding profusely, hopped up on speed, and dressed in a clown suit, has made his way onto the game board and is staggering about, looking for a clear shot at DeLaroza and Hotchins in order to have his revenge.

A moment after the operator had ordered the ride to begin he looked up and saw Scardi, wandering like a lost child among the field of flashing bumpers.

"Hey, you!" he screamed. "Get outa here, you crazy fool!"

The bleeding apparition kept coming toward him.

"Oh, my God," he cried, "get outa there. The goddamn ball's coming!"

He snatched up the emergency phone.

Scardi shot him in the head.

The operator fell to the floor. Scardi could hear the rumble as the ball began its descent. It boomed out of the tunnel at the upper end of the game, spiraled around the giant playing surface, and rolled out onto the board, struck the first bumper, bounced away from it in a blaze of lights and clanging bells. It sped up toward the top of the field, ricocheting off the guard rail into another bumper.

As I said, who would willingly…? But aren't you intrigued?

From inside the ball, DeLaroza saw the grinning face of Shou-Lsing, god of long life, grinning down at him as the steel car struck the springs around its base and bounced away, spinning around on its ball bearings, rolling toward another. It was picking up speed as it hit another bumper and another, jerking him and Hotchins from one side of the seat to the other. The ball sped past the control booth and he looked up.

There was no one in it!

"My God!" he cried out.

"What's the matter?"

"There's no one at the controls, no one to brake us."

The ball struck another bumper and reeled away from it, spinning on its axis, and rolled into one of the narrow funnel-like bunkers, slowing as it went through the tight passageway.

At the other end Scardi was standing in a dueling position, his side facing the ball, his hand held straight out, aiming his pistol at DeLaroza.

...and there, surely, is the nightmare everyone fears when getting on an amusement park ride: the sight of a homicidal maniac standing there with a gun. Remember that Scardi is dressed in a clown suit. We now begin a section of the story that is characterized by lots of bulging eyes.

(Also, I looked it up to make sure, and it turned out that I was correct in my first impression that there is no such god as "Shou-Lsing," in the Chinese or any other pantheon, even allowing for bad transliteration.)

DeLaroza's eyes bulged as he saw the assassin standing there, waiting to kill him.

He released the catch on the side of the guard bar and jumped out of the ball. Hotchins, confused and dizzy, tried to follow.

I can relate to Hotchins' confusion (and dizziness), but DeLaroza must be an awfully cool character if he has the presence of mind to totally dismiss the minor detail of Scardi's blood-soaked clown suit.

I'll skip a few paragraphs (and references to bulging eyes) and bring us to the real pith of the scene--Scardi shoots Hotchins in the chest, killing him and pushing him back into his seat in the ball; DeLaroza has managed to get out and sustains minor injuries, including a pair of scraped knees. As the ball continues to clang around (with its cargo of one U.S. senator, DOA), DeLaroza remonstrates with Scardi. However, he makes the mistake of referring to Scardi using his alias, Howard Burns, which sends the Sicilian over the edge. Yelling maniacally, Scardi reveals DeLaroza's real identity, as the press cameras neatly capture the evidence.

"Howard, for God's sake, listen to me!" DeLaroza screamed. He was backing up, trying to keep the bumper between him and Scardi.

"Don't call me that!" Scardi cried out. "I ain't Howard. I ain't Burns. I'm Scardi. I made you. You hear me, Younger? You was nothin' but a dumb goddamn dogface. I gave you all this."

He stepped from behind the bumper and fired at DeLaroza. The bullet hit the wall and one of the mirrors burst into dozens of reflecting shards.

I forgot to mention this detail about the ride. It's filled with mirrors. Glass mirrors. In a ride comprised of careening steel balls large enough to hold two people.

DeLaroza turned around and ran, aimlessly, dodging among the grinning statues and flashing lights.

The pinball, totally out of control and roaring across the playing field, struck its last bumper, lurched over the floor, leaped the guard rail, and crashed through the wall.

The mirror exploded into millions of splinters. The wall shattered as the steel ball burst through it and rolled out at the foot of Ladder Street, struck one man and sent him reeling back up the steps, rolled over another, crashed into a shop at the bottom of the street and ripped through it, bursting out onto the main thoroughfare amid a shower of dolls, bracelets, and postcards.

(This is where I was laughing so hard that I was gasping for breath. I think it was the image of dolls showering down and fluttering postcards everywhere. Remember also that there's a dead senator in the ball as it hurtles along.)

The crowd scattered, falling over each other, as the antic pinball smashed through it, tossing people into the air like tenpins, ripping the marquee off the puppet theater before it tore through the wall at the edge of the man-made lake and soared out over the water. It plunged down into one of the sampans, split it in half, and hit the lake, sending a geyser twenty feet in the air, before it finally rolled to a stop.

DeLaroza limped toward the gaping hole in the wall. Scardi aimed and shot him in the thigh. He fell forward, hit the springs at the base of a bumper, and was thrown like a rag doll almost to Scardi's feet.

Good shot, Scardi!

The killer looked down at the battered DeLaroza. He calmly snapped a fresh clip into the pistol.

DeLaroza crawled to his knees. Across the floor he saw a man standing in the emergency doorway, watching the mad scene.

"Help me," he yelled. "Please, help me."

The man in the doorway yelled back to him.

"My name's Sharky. Hear that, DeLaroza? Sharky!"

DeLaroza moaned. He looked back at Scardi. The assassin was still standing over him, grinning, aiming the pistol down at him. The gun thunked once, twice, three times, and the bullets tore into DeLaroza's chest. He screamed once and fell forward, his head resting on its forehead in front of his knees, like a man in prayer.

Grinning maniacally, Scardi leaned forward and shot him again in the back of the head.

"Okay, Scardi, that's enough," Sharky said.

The mad clown turned toward him. Sharky stepped over the railing and started for him.

"Drop the gun, Scardi," Sharky called to him. "Police."

The word seemed to trigger Scardi's dying energy. He scrambled through the ragged hole in the wall, crawling through broken glass and splinters of plywood, out into the main floor of Pachinko!

Scardi crashes through the amusement park, terrorizing those still foolish enough to tarry in the place after they saw the giant steel ball containing the corpse of the senator go smashing through the market and into the lake (or perhaps they couldn't all get out in time, given that the only access to the place was through elevators?). He winds up at the mouth of a cave where the animatronic creatures dwell, choosing this place to make his stand.

Sharky walked into Tiger Balm Gardens, stepped over the fence, and followed resolutely after the mobster.

The silenced pistol spewed and dust kicked up in front of Sharky. He did not duck, did not dodge to one side or the other. He kept going, straight ahead, closing in.

Scardi dragged himself to his feet, backed away from him. His sight was almost gone. A vague shadow was moving toward him. He backed around a ridge in the cliffs and slumped against the rocks.

The unearthly shriek behind him was like no cry he had ever heard in his life.

He turned, looked up. A dragon loomed over him. Its mouth began to open.

Scardi screamed in pure terror.

The dragon's mouth opened wide and a river of flame poured from it, and enveloped him.

Scardi was a human torch, his clothes and body an inferno, his screams of pain as unearthly as the creature that had just incinerated him. He rolled back around the ridge, feet and hands thrashing madly.

Sharky considers putting Scardi out of his misery after the encounter with the animatronic dragon, but decides against it and walks away. Scardi's screams echo across the park as he is destroyed in the conflagration. Sharky is met by his colleagues and the lovely Domino, none of whom (presumably) found themselves beset by the steel ball or Scardi on his way to his fiery end.

Domino and Papa came down the battered street toward him. She stopped a few feet in front of him.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

"Never better," he said and smiled down at her. Then he took her by the arm and walked to the edge of the lake. The stainless steel pinball lay upside down in three feet of water. Hotchins was hanging from the guard bar, his head and shoulders under water, his once handsome face distorted like a reflection in a funhouse mirror.

"So much for the next president of the United States," he said. "And that was the shortest political campaign in history."

Et fini. (Actually, there's a quick confrontation between Skarky and his now even more unsympathetic boss, but Sharky snubs him and he and Domino drive off into the sunset. Surely they can now both live comfortably off Domino's income as a prostitute.)

What on earth could all this mean?

The Christian Bible, that delicious (though badly misunderstood) document full of colorful stories, tells of how an angry god struck down a number of construction workers who were earnestly building a tall tower. Their crime, evidently, was hubris (but what about the architects, or their client? I don't know the story well enough to know what happened them). The destruction of Pachinko! in the manner described must surely, therefore, be a literary effort to communicate the same warning. DeLaroza's penitent attitude in death would seem to bear this out, though perhaps I'm being overly charitable and finding symbolism that wasn't really put there--intentionally, at least.

So we have a modern day Tower of Babel, albeit one kitted out with grinning Chinese gods in a large facsimile of a Japanese gambling game, a Hong Kong-themed amusement park, and a speed-addled Sicilian gangster in a clown suit, overseen by a cop and an appallingly dressed prostitute. Ah, America in the 70s.

I do not recommend this book.

Believe me when I tell you that I have extracted every word of it that's worth reading, and whatever inadvertent humor it contains is all the value it has. It's rare that I'm so harsh, but in this case it's warranted.

Apparently Sharky's Machine was made into a film starring Burt Reynolds (who else?). Having endured the ordeal of the book, I now must locate the film, and I can only hope that they decided against the demands of good taste not to scrap the climactic scene. Although I suspect I'll have to drink a bottle of vodka followed immediately by six cups of coffee to be able to relate to the characters at all.

Oh, I've started a new story today. I quite like the idea and can state with confidence that it does not borrow from Sharky's Machine in tone, content, or style. More on this later.