The Deadly Deep
Jon Messmann
Signet, 1976
ISBN: 451-W6992-150
We’re wading back into dangerous waters, folks. If you were to believe trash paperback fiction in the mid-70s all the animals were out to kill us. That’s how I get all my information by the way. I’ve said it before, but in case you missed it, Jaws and Peter Benchley skyrocketed the idea and everyone wanted to cash in. Of course, sea monsters go back to the first time people saw the sea, I mean it really is full of weirdo monsters just do a Google search. Then there’s all the myths and legends throughout, wait a minute...I’m not here to give you a dissertation on sea monsters, I’ll just get to the book.
Jon Messmann was a genre author. He wrote tons of westerns, the adult kind. He wrote entries in the Nick Carter: Killmaster spy series then a great vigilante series called The Revenger and a few other series of his own. Past that he wrote gothics, romance, stand-alones, whatever he could sell. Which leads us right into horror. When the market turned to horrific fiction, he wrote that too. Penning this epic and Phone Call a novelization of the film Murder by Phone aka Bells, about, you guessed it, someone killing people by telephone. Messmann was an old pro with a unique style to himself full of “intelligent” characters who like to talk and philosophize and with a slightly posh attitude at times.
So, the world is all screwed up (we knew that already) but the way this novel’s world is screwed-up is that all the marine life is really out to eat you. Whales want to swallow you, crabs want to pink you with little crab claws and normally, you know, wimpy fish are consuming folks at an alarming rate. Pretty scary stuff I guess if you live by the ocean. Luckily I’m land-locked and would have ridden this particular storm out just fine to keep writing these reviews.
Now the fish are bonkers, who can save us? Aran (not a typo) Holder a freelance journalist. Who can he save us? By making phone calls and having meetings with people. The THRILLS of it all. The meetings and phone calls also really go nowhere, mostly because the book is full of morons. Take in point the Fish and Wildlife guy who tells his girlfriend it's safe to GOSWIMMING in the middle of some sort of fish-apocalypse. Aran (not a typo) isn’t much of a hero, certainly not the hero you’d want in an animal-horror book. He wanders around, ponders, slowly investigates, and has sex. That’s about it. Having read some of Messmann’s other work, I know he tends to lean into mystery/thriller writing in other genres, like his Men’s Adventure work. So, this being having a slower mystery feel wasn’t too shocking but it works better in a 150-something page book vs. a plodding 200-something behemoth. The actual reason that the marine life has turned on is a STRETCH even by 70s monster book standards and it all sort fizzles into nothing by the end and leaves you wishing you picked up a Guy N. Smith Crab book instead.
Where the book does work is the animal attacks and Messmann plops them in nicely throughout the narrative, but they simply aren’t enough to save it. Sadly, the whole thing was just a bit of a snooze and I almost didn’t finish it (life’s too short for bad books) but the sprinkling of fish-mayhem kept me flipping pages. I’m a big fan of Messmann’s work, this one is just a major fail. We all have ‘em. I’m still interested in reading Phone Call, because that horror set-up is more in-line with his normal work.
Roy Nugen is an award-winning writer, producer, property master, plus actor. He comes from a family of musicians, engineers, wildcatters, cops, lion tamers, and carpet salesmen. Evil Dead II changed his life and he once partied with Lloyd Kaufman.
He has written 15 short films including Bag Full of Trouble, Potboiler, Handle With Care, Death in Lavender, Hole in the Ground, and the feature film Arrive Alive, many of which have played across the country. He has been the property master on 17 short films and 2 feature films.
Roy is also a prolific book reviewer and collector of vintage pulp paperback books. You can read his reviews on his blog Bloody, Spicy Books and multiple magazines including Paperback Fanatic, Hot Lead and Sleazy Reader. He has also written afterwards for novels and for various websites. He lives in the only city that once arrested L. Ron Hubbard with his wife and cats.