The Fifth Law Of Hawkins
NEW––BroDart Dust Jacket Cover
Author: Charles Durden
First Edition
St. Martin's Press
©1990 Charles Durden/St. Martin's Press
CAB Comment––I actually knew author Charles Durden (who was a war correspondent in the Vietnam War) during my 21 years lost in L.A. I met him one night at a small New Year’s Eve get-together with mutual friends, among them Executive Producer Christopher Webster (Hellraiser, Hellbound: Hellrasier II, Heathers) and Rodney Montague (Special Effects Producer on many noted films). I didn’t immediately like Charlie, but I was in a bad mood that night. Ultimately, he turned out to be a very kind and generous person and even read the first 100 pages of my novel “Puzzleman”––and then, to my utter shock, he actually called me and said it wasn’t his usual genre to read, and he thought I was doing something different (“I don’t what it is,” he said) but that I was doing something very right and to keep at it. I was extremely flattered and uplifted. I also read Charlie’s second novel not long after that, “The Fifth Law Of Hawkins” and became a fan. I didn’t see Charlie often before he died of cancer in the very early 2000s, but when I did, he was a genuine person and down-to-earth individual thinker. Both of his two novels are definitely worth reading, worth remembering––and so is Charlie.
“The Fifth Law Of Hawkins”––Kirkus Reviews:
“An irreverent, hilarious thriller starring hero Jamie Hawkins, last seen smoking dope in Vietnam in No Bugles, No Drums (1976). Hawkins is now back stateside working as the world's unlikeliest journalist—and finding that life on a Philadelphia newspaper isn't much different from the Asian jungles. Bailed out of a Mexican jail (why?) by rich, attractive newspaper widow Juliet Franklin-Rossini and set to writing feature stories (i.e., obits) for the Call, Hawkins stumbles onto the scene of a Christmas Eve hostage crisis and—after the perpetrator he and sidekick Leon Ferris have turned over to the police is found dead in custody—into the middle of Police Commissioner Rudolph Reichmann's hit list. The heat rises after Hawkins, wandering away from a museum tour, turns up evidence of a massive cache of counterinsurgency weapons underneath the museum and realizes that Reichmann and his high-placed political buddies have created a straw-man terrorist organization as an excuse for their imminent right-wing auto-da-fÉ; but Hawkins still has plenty of time for insistently proprietary Juliet, sweetly literate barmaid Sheila Wolinski, and even princessy rival reporter Alexis Cabot, stoutly defending to each his resistance to commitment. Lots of sexism, gay-bashing, and attitude problems still leave time for a shapely plot and 10,000 funny cracks—even though you may be ashamed of yourself for laughing. Readers who don't Find Hawkins insufferably self-righteous about his caffeine-drugs-tequila life-style will be hooked from the moment he first sees Jesus in the Baltimore railroad yard.”
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