Finished Mo 8/9/21
This is one of my ancient paperbacks that I first read and finished on Mo 10/4/93
"Capitalism gives all of us opportunity if we seize it with both hands and hang on to it"- AL CAPONE
Set in 70's Atlanta, Georgia.
A corrupt Georgia congressman is trying to seek the Democratic nomination for president to run against Gerald Ford. Jimmy Carter actually ran against Ford. The novel mentions Ford's 'distancing himself' from Nixon's malfeasance.
A cop named Sharky finds an erotic tape from a high priced hooker that links the politician to her.
***I included this kindle review from Amazon since it does a pretty good job relating the plot of this compelling novel.
"This book is probably 3.5 stars – between “I Like It” and “It’s Okay”. It has a lot of qualities that make it an enjoyable and exciting book, and it has some qualities that make it annoying, unbelievable, and frustrating.
It opens with a scene set in WWII. A small group of American soldiers sets out on an apparently doomed mission to recover a shipment dropped from an Allied aircraft. In this scene we learn things and we meet people who are to be critical players later in the story – pay close attention.
Shortly after the war, one of the two surviving members of the group is murdered by another critical player - pay attention here, too.
Fast forward to the present time (1970’s). Sharky is a dedicated young Atlanta city cop on the narcotics squad. While setting up a drug dealer for an arrest, things go badly and he ends up chasing the dealer across town and onto a city bus, where he shoots him dead amidst a load of passengers. Despite his success, his overbearing, hardline captain is displeased and busts him into vice. Ironically, vice is full of people who are remarkably talented and aggressive, and from these people Sharky puts together his “machine”, a collection of cops with various talents who work together to pursue a case.
Sharky’s machine is investigating a high end prostitution outfit when they stumble upon a crime syndicate which reaches into the top drawer of politics and includes a senator who is going to run for president. They meet the enchantingly beautiful, captivating Domino, the prostitute who is involved (unwittingly to some degree) with the crime group. Sharky finds himself attracted to her, and strangely she begins to fall for him as well. But while Sharky is staking out her apartment, a gunman shows up and blows her away with a double barrel shotgun.
The machine continues to pursue the case, looking for Domino’s killer and piecing together seemingly unrelated clues. They use their various talents to face down resistance, deadly danger, and all sorts of characters from the criminal underworld of Atlanta. They attract the attention of the criminal group, they discover who is behind the scenes, and they hatch a plan to take out the bad guys.
At the end, the players from the very first part of the book are revealed to be the masterminds behind the criminal activity, and Sharky and his group discover that their goal is to enable their senator friend to ascend to the presidency and thus have the most powerful man in the world under their collective thumb. A shootout takes place, Sharky is reunited with a lost love, the good guys win, and the book is over.
Sharky’s Machine is quite well written by a guy who is very capable of crafting words into a tale that grabs your attention and makes you want to stay with the book to the very end. The prose is appealing, the pace is quick and exciting, and the grammar is correct. Action and surprises are on nearly every page, and the descriptions of 1970’s Atlanta and the police tactics and strategies, the criminal activity, and the jargon of the time are captured nicely. The descriptions of the sexual activity are explicit; indeed they are “unambiguous” by today’s standard, and I imagine they were scandalous at the time the book was written. (I have the feeling this is why my mom didn’t want me to watch Burt Reynolds movies.)
The book isn’t without its flaws, however. Most annoying is the failure of the author to reinforce the presence of the early characters in the reader’s mind. The prologue chapters involving the WWII plot include characters essential to the story. They appear briefly in the beginning, but they are not visited again until the end of the book when the author ties up [some] of the loose ends. I understand that it is supposed to be a surprise plot twist, discovering that the people you meet early on are alive and well and are responsible for the mayhem in the book; however, so much happens between the beginning and the end that I found myself flipping back to the beginning to figure out who the people were.
And the ending. Well. It just ends. The final scene, where everyone is shooting everyone, just isn’t terribly believable. I can’t imagine cops working that way. When Sharky walks out at the end with the girl on his arm, and walks right past his enraged boss, it is hard to imagine how he is going to get away without at least being fired, and possibly even getting arrested.
The story itself is well written and easy to read, but it is based on some goofy, unrealistic foundations. Such is the way with novels, obviously, but the book simply does not provide the closure that you would expect from something as long and as detailed as Sharky’s Machine otherwise is. Read it for nostalgia’s sake, and read it for its grit, but pay careful attention to everyone you meet.
Like nearly every thriller lover in Atlanta at the time, I read "Sharky's Machine" when it was first published in the 1970s and have fond memories of both the book and the underrated Burt Reynolds movie of the same title. "Sharky's Machine" was the first major contemporary thriller I can recall with an Atlanta setting, and both the book and the movie captured the feel of the city at that time. When it was recently offered for free on Amazon, I decided to reread it some 30 years later, to see if it held up. Despite some preposterous plotting (of the James Bond movie variety), it does.
Sharky, the title character, is a top Atlanta undercover cop who runs afoul of the brass when an attempted drug buy goes bad, resulting in a shootout on a crowded city bus. Even though no one but the drug dealer was hurt, the press has a field day with the event, and Sharky winds up being sent to the Vice Squad, a dumping ground for similar cops who have had a falling out with the powers that be. Sharky discovers that he's working with some good, experienced detectives who are tired of busting streetwalkers and flashers and want some real action. They soon get their wish.
"Sharky's Machine" takes place in 1975, and the major storyline revolves around a Southern politician who, like the real life Jimmy Carter at that time, is planning to run for President. He's got big bucks behind him as well, in the person of Victor DeLaroza, a shady businessman who seemed to appear from nowhere after World War II and later became a tycoon. As readers gradually learn throughout the course of the book, DeLaroza's fortune had its origins in an American gold shipment that disappeared in Italy in World War II following a botched intelligence operation. Since then, DeLaroza has been gradually eliminating anyone who might be able to tie him to the missing gold, with the help of a top notch hitman who also had ties to the gold shipment. The last potential witness is a high end call girl named Domino who has been very friendly with both Victor and the politician in the past. After one last romp in the hay with Domino, Victor dispatches the hitman to eliminate her.
Unfortunately for them, Sharky and his pals had been staking out Domino's apartment on an unrelated case and arrive on the scene just after the killer escapes. They decide to pursue the investigation into her murder on their own without involving Homicide, especially since Sharky by now has a personal motive, since he had met Domino and fallen for her hard. Thanks to some shrewd detective work (including some 1970s era forensic work by a couple of Sharky's buddies in the crime lab and M.E.'s office), they soon put the pieces together, leading to a highly suspenseful final confrontation with DeLaroza at the grand opening of a lavish indoor amusement park the businessman had recently built (based on an actual park built in Atlanta at that time).
The main action of the book, from Sharky's drug bust gone bad to the final confrontation, takes place in less than a week, and Diehl stretches credibility considerably to have so much happen in such a short period of time. However, this accelerated timeline makes for a very fast paced read, and readers will find themselves easily getting swept up in the case. Sharky and his fellow cops make for scruffy, likable underdogs, and they have a knack for astute observation and clever deduction, asking the right questions, and knowing the right people to lean on. They aren't as fully developed as they might have been, but Diehl provides as much detail as he can without harming the narrative pace. Frankly, Diehl could easily have written a long running series about these characters, gradually filling in the character details. The most interesting aspect of the investigation is the period forensics work, with modern day readers sure to get a kick out of the "primitive" methods the cops had to rely on back then.
Diehl was quite well versed on a number of topics, including Oriental culture, and, since DeLaRoza is a big admirer of that culture, Diehl could showcase his knowledge at length without really interfering with the flow of the story. He also describes in considerable detail and considerable length some rather graphic sexual scenes involving Domino and DeLaRoza. The language is quite explicit in these scenes, albeit quite erotic as well. Readers who don't care for that sort of material should be advised accordingly.
There are a few things to quibble about in "Sharky's Machine," including some rather incredible coincidences that move the plot along. Similarly, Diehl finds the "mystery" of DeLaroza's origins and how they tie into the missing gold shipment far more interesting than I did. Some judicious editing of this material would have allowed more time with Sharky and the cops. However, there's no denying that the book has everything you'd want in a thriller: often clever dialogue, a major plot twist, a couple of exciting action set pieces, and a suspenseful finale. If anything, the story's more entertaining today than when it was written because of the historical perspective we now have of what was then contemporary. "Sharky's Machine" remains what it was then: a fast paced thrill ride with an authentic Atlanta setting. I'd rate it 4 1/2 stars, rounded up to five based on the setting (I've always got a soft spot for local literature)."
William Diehl is a great writer and I'll keep my eyes open for more by this author.
