Andy Lew works in one of the 42nd Street grindhouses as a projectionist, always championing the explicit, the outré, the weird. Maybe it’s what the Colossus’ audiences have been eager to see all these years, or maybe he’s just giving himself a perverse satisfaction. The truth is found somewhere in the Venn Diagram overlap between both of these outcomes. He’s an artist, he’s a junkie, he’s obsessed with a film woman he cannot identify, he’s a thief of moments who swipes individual frames here and there from the prints that roll through his theater. The 1970s is the heyday of such licentious material, giving him access to some interesting stuff indeed.
Andy’s latest program is for Last House on Dead End Street, a flick that has attracted the wrong kind of attention. It’s a cinematic depiction of human evil and twisted kink, and it also happens to be a flick that a couple of losers kind of want to steal. Why? Who hired them? Well, that’s part of the mystery. Could it be the porn star Nicky “Blayze” Blaszkiewicz, who faked his own death and now lords over a hidden empire of sex and violence? Well, be him or not, he might be the guy to show Andy’s experimental film to: a clipped together bit of elements stolen from other movies or taken from real life traumas: it’s a film looking for a distributor.
However, bad luck rears its ugly head when Andy’s dirty cop pal Michael “Gator” Hyatt shows up with news: Andy’s missing brother Steven has been found. Actually, it’s only his head that’s been located, and the forensic evidence around that head has been opening a lot of questions about statements Andy made at the time of his brother’s disappearance. This news has set a fire under Andy’s butt about getting some cash and getting out of town (with his prized reel, of course; he could not go anywhere without … Her). Maybe getting a new identity and a new existence in California.
Everything seems to be conspiring against Andy, however. His manager at the Colossus, the cops, his own family, and a patron with an agenda are all working against his best wishes. And the monkey on Andy’s back doesn’t help.
When his one prized possession is taken from him, well, that’s a step too far. Tracking it down will reveal plenty about the city that he’s taken for granted and his place in it. He will discover the identity of the mastermind behind The Last House on Dead End Street print theft, a hidden cult, and even the depth of homicidal evil he is capable of. Andy Lew is coming, and he’s not going to let anything stand between him and his true, sick love.
Preston Fassel’s novel The Beasts of 42nd Street is a difficult to categorize beast all its own. A gritty novel that deals with crime fiction staples, but is not crime fiction per se. It’s a novel about one man standing against overwhelming odds, but it’s not a thriller per se. It’s about a bargain made with a mysterious power, fueled with murder and drugs, but it’s not a horror novel per se. Some passages possess a surreal stream of consciousness, others are energetic rants, and still others are sobering evocations of a bygone place in a bygone time but it’s not a literary novel per se. In fact, The Beasts of 42nd Street draws upon all of these sources. It’s also a solid character study of an odious but ultimately sympathetic sicko. It’s an occult-themed grindhouse movie for the mind’s eye, in fact, and when it is firing on all cylinders it’s almost impossible to put down.
One of the fascinating elements in this book is how it acts like a mirror to some of the author’s previous works. Specifically, I noticed both thematic and structural linkages to Fassel’s novella, The Despicable Fantasies of Quentin Sergenov. Though Andy Lew is not a human brain deposited inside a deinonychus thanks to weird science, he is every bit as isolated, lonely, and dangerous as Quentin Sergenov from that earlier book. Both works follow a similar progression of loneliness, obsession, reaching out, being hurt, and then ultimately exploding into an incredibly violent final act. Here, we have a generally much meatier story, a beautiful evocation of the grit and grime of New York in this era, and an infusion of fictional events with actual history.
Fassel’s novel is divided into multiple sections modeled after a film festival offering. Instead of a proper prologue, we get Coming Attractions, followed by three lengthy Feature Films (two set in the story’s present day, and one that’s flashback to fill in the gaps), and end with a Missing Reel, followed by End Credits (for the Author’s Acknowledgements). These divisions fit into the book’s setup quite nicely. There are no chapter breaks labeled as such. Instead, we get scene breaks.
Fassel is an author who is not afraid to drop readers right into the middle of action, giving us a sink or swim appreciation for the material that’s going along. There are plenty of foreshadowing, cryptic comments, and details we are left to wonder about—just who is this Her that Andy’s so infatuated with? What film is he talking about? Reading the book is akin to first experiencing David Mamet’s Glengarry Glenn Ross on stage—listening in to people accustomed to the jargon for their jobs, talking to one another without any concern for cluing us in to just what they’re saying. It’s challenging, but not impossible, to figure out what’s going on and that only adds to the book’s attraction for me. It feels all the more authentic instead of manufactured–dare I say more real than reel?
The way Fassel weaves the supernatural threads into the narrative is terrific as well. They are not in your face sorts of things, but sly and questionable—is Mr. Draft just a dude with incredible resources and a perverse sense of humor or could he really be the Devil? This is also in keeping with some of the exploitation fare that serves as spiritual influences /corruptions on this work. I love a book that manages to straddle the “is it/isn’t it otherworldly?” question until its final pages … and leaves us wondering if what we’ve read is even reliable closure or just another slice of unreliable shuck and jive.
Some readers may well be overwhelmed by the plot threads that dangle throughout the book. There are a lot of avenues that open up but never reach a real sense of resolution. In that way, the book feels like a poorly tended bonsai plant, with branches that go every which way and may well need serious pruning. Folks who want a more definitive beginning, middle, and end to their novels will find that with a bit of work. However, there are many avenues not taken, characters who make a notable or threatening appearance and are not heard from again, plot seeds that don’t sprout in Andy Lux’s life, and some flashback material that appears and disappears without leaving much impact. This kind of cluttered approach only makes the book feel all the more like a document of actual life, but it won’t please folks looking for an uncluttered experience.
The Beasts of 42nd Street is not necessarily an entertaining book, per se. It’s an interesting one, captivating and scuzzy and as fascinating as a car crash. Andy Lew is not a likeable protagonist, but he is one that’s interesting to follow around for a while. Fassel’s book is a real trip of a read, an immersion into the filth of The Deuce at its height and a way to process all the freaks, geeks, and beasts who dwell there. A mishmash of genres, an elegant prose style, and a wealth of research bring this period and these people to giddy and often gruesome life in a yarn that’s impossible to forget once the final page is turned.
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A special thank you to both NetGalley and Cemetery Dance for supplying an eARC in exchange for an honest review.
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The Beasts of 42nd Street is available in eBook and paperback editions from the folks at Cemetery Dance.
Next week, we take a look at the second volume of Rachel Givens Kurtz’s Death Violations. Immortal Protocol is available in eBook and paperback editions.
“Death is Beautiful: Preston Fassel’s The Beasts of 42nd Street” is copyright © 2023 by Daniel R. Robichaud. Cover image taken from the Cemetery Dance eBook edition, released 2023.
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This had me at the very beginning. It sounds excellent. I had no idea about this one, thank you for this review. I am obsessed with the idea of time aligned with the concept of theft, this is interesting because you inherently give time to consuming the material present in any artistic work. I at first thought you were reviewing a movie by the way, so forgive any strange language in this review.
The characters sound unique, genuine and interesting which is rare, or I find it to be in this genre, that often times provides readers with straw men that erected out of the author’s misunderstanding of the subject, having an inherent lack of knowledge about those depicted in the work. It is always refreshing to see something that does not do the whole moralistic characterization of the dark matters of the world.
All in all thank you for posting this.
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