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Moses Wine #7
Dead Meet
110 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1988
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 25, 2023
Dead Meet (1968) was the first of eleven novels by Simon. He also wrote seven screenplays. Dead Meet was later picked up for republication by Black Lizard’s crime fiction revival in the 1989’s. It is not one of the better known Black Lizard books.
Marcus Rottner is taking time off after college to find himself before embarking on a career. He and his girlfriend Jennifer are from well-to-do families and spend their time getting stoned and going to parties and Vietnam War protests. Our story begins with Marcus calmly discussing aspects of his apartment and the air conditioner and Jennifer’s drug overdosed corpse on his bed. Technically, she may have overdosed, but he thinks his giving her heroin to counteract the amphetamines might have done it. That makes him kind of the responsible party. And, thus, the title appears to be a pun itself (e.g. Dead Meat).
Luckily, there’s no blood so Marcus can easily move the corpse around the apartment and across state lines without breaking a sweat. Indeed, Marcus has no guilt for what happened. Not one ounce of panic. He just needs to dispose of her body and it will all blow over. You get to he impression he’s cold, detached, withdrawn.
He tells his story in daily diary chapters, reminiscing about his relationship with Jennifer. He makes light of the corpse telling his psychiatrist he had the body in the antique harpsichord, but no one takes it seriously. What was missing from this story is a sense of desperation on the part of Marcus. He knows he has to dispose of the body, but never seems to be in any emotional turmoil. Even when you hear his inner dialogue, it lacks compelling emotion. There are a number of points that are humorous, including all the attempts to get rid of the damned corpse, but they are told in such a flat manner, the humor is lost.
Marcus Rottner is taking time off after college to find himself before embarking on a career. He and his girlfriend Jennifer are from well-to-do families and spend their time getting stoned and going to parties and Vietnam War protests. Our story begins with Marcus calmly discussing aspects of his apartment and the air conditioner and Jennifer’s drug overdosed corpse on his bed. Technically, she may have overdosed, but he thinks his giving her heroin to counteract the amphetamines might have done it. That makes him kind of the responsible party. And, thus, the title appears to be a pun itself (e.g. Dead Meat).
Luckily, there’s no blood so Marcus can easily move the corpse around the apartment and across state lines without breaking a sweat. Indeed, Marcus has no guilt for what happened. Not one ounce of panic. He just needs to dispose of her body and it will all blow over. You get to he impression he’s cold, detached, withdrawn.
He tells his story in daily diary chapters, reminiscing about his relationship with Jennifer. He makes light of the corpse telling his psychiatrist he had the body in the antique harpsichord, but no one takes it seriously. What was missing from this story is a sense of desperation on the part of Marcus. He knows he has to dispose of the body, but never seems to be in any emotional turmoil. Even when you hear his inner dialogue, it lacks compelling emotion. There are a number of points that are humorous, including all the attempts to get rid of the damned corpse, but they are told in such a flat manner, the humor is lost.
May 7, 2023
Dead Meet by Roger Simon (1968), who also wrote the Moses Wine P.I. series, started off really good then complete lost it in the second half of the book. Like Moses Wine the lead character of Dead Meet is Marcus, a wealthy Jewish guy from New Jersey, and this is played up and overdone from beginning to end (ok, the guy's Jewish, big deal...). The book is a diary where Marcus documents the death of his girl friend, Jennifer, from a heroin overdose and the fallout that results. The final 20 pgs. of the book lands into nauseating experimental writing, '60's style, that ruined a possibly decent noir....2 outta 5.0, and that's being kind...
August 23, 2015
Originally (and much more appropriately) titled Heir when it was released in 1968, Dead Meet (puns are the refuge of scoundrels...) is not, as Goodreads suggests, an entry in the author's Moses Wine series, but a stand alone story. The narrator is the independently wealthy, preppy heir to a Jewish mobster's fortune. His nymphomaniac girlfriend has just OD'd on heroin from an injection he furnished her. The overdose may or may not be accidental, but the narrator decides to write the diary of a murderer as his girlfriend's body slowly decomposes in his New Jersey apartment (he keeps his air conditioner cranked full blast in an attempt to keep her from becoming too "ripe" and tipping off the neighbors). He recounts how he met her, details their dysfunctional relationship (including how she eventually introduced him into the world of narcotics), and relates some of his sordid family background, as well as his present-day attempts to cover up the death and dispose of the body.
This book fits a little more comfortably among those of authors like Philip Roth or Woody Allen, who write stories about neurotic, nebbishy, northeastern Jewish American males (although it is markedly inferior to the aforementioned authors' works), than it does among the hardboiled works one typically expects from Black Lizard. I really found it hard to get into this book. I don't need the protagonist to be nice or likable, but he or she should at least be interesting. This guy wasn't all that interesting, dead body hidden in his antique harpsichord notwithstanding.
This appears to have been Simon's first book, and it shows. He really can't restrain himself from attempting to try and relate his protagonist's actions to all of the "big issues" of the late 60's, like free love, drug use, and Vietnam, all of which feels like a rather calculated attempt to take a simple yet solid premise and turn it into a Profound Statement about [what was] Today's Generation. Unfortunately, it just makes the book feel very pretentious and dated today.
This book fits a little more comfortably among those of authors like Philip Roth or Woody Allen, who write stories about neurotic, nebbishy, northeastern Jewish American males (although it is markedly inferior to the aforementioned authors' works), than it does among the hardboiled works one typically expects from Black Lizard. I really found it hard to get into this book. I don't need the protagonist to be nice or likable, but he or she should at least be interesting. This guy wasn't all that interesting, dead body hidden in his antique harpsichord notwithstanding.
This appears to have been Simon's first book, and it shows. He really can't restrain himself from attempting to try and relate his protagonist's actions to all of the "big issues" of the late 60's, like free love, drug use, and Vietnam, all of which feels like a rather calculated attempt to take a simple yet solid premise and turn it into a Profound Statement about [what was] Today's Generation. Unfortunately, it just makes the book feel very pretentious and dated today.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews