Wed 1 Feb 2023
An Archived PI Review by Bob Adey: ROGER L. SIMON – Wild Turkey.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[15] Comments
ROGER L. SIMON – Wild Turkey. Moses Wine #2. Straight Arrow, hardcover, 1974. Pocket, paperback, 1976. Warner, paperback, 1986. iBooks, softcover, 2000.
The second Moses Wine book and in my view a better and less confused book than the first, The Big Fix. From the word go the pace is hectic as Wine, initially challenged to clear best selling author Jock Hecht of the murder of a famous TV woman newscaster, finds himself chasing desperately after Hecht’s killer and searching for some mysterious tapes before he himself is bumped off.
There’s a touch of the Donald Westlake about some of it, and by and large I enjoyed it. I’m not sure that I believe in Wine’s strange domestic set up or casual sex life — but I’m not sure that it matters.
The Moses Wine series —
The Big Fix. Straight Arrow, 1973.
Wild Turkey. Straight Arrow, 1974.
Peking Duck. Simon & Schuster, 1979.
California Roll. Villard, 1985.
The Straight Man. Villard, 1986.
Raising the Dead. Villard, 1988.
Director’s Cut, Atria, 2003.
February 1st, 2023 at 9:17 pm
Says Kevin Burton Smith on his Thrilling Detective website:
“Back in 1973, when Roger Simon first introduced MOSES WINE in The Big Fix, just the fact that his laidback, long-haired Los Angeles-based private eye was Jewish and smoked pot was more than enough to shake up the genre. Now, he’d probably have to be a black, physically-challenged Rastafarian lesbian tai chi expert with a talking cat from Jupiter to stand out.
“But The Big Fix was some kinda classic; a window to a time, a place, an era. The sixties? Simon got it. And he meant it, man.”
https://thrillingdetective.com/2022/05/04/moses-wine/
Checking out that page just now reminded me that Richard Dreyfuss played Moses Wine in a movie version of THE BIG FIX. I don’t remember seeing that film, but what I remember from reading two or three of the series, Dreyfuss ought to have been perfect for the part.
February 1st, 2023 at 11:48 pm
Dreyfuss was perfect, and I recall a favorable feeling about the film though little else.
Simon shook things up a bit with the series but didn’t quite have what it took with the film THE BIG LEBOWSKI and Thomas Pynchon’s private eye novel INHERENT VICE taking the idea of Wine to its logical conclusion.
If he had I suspect we wouldn’t have had to wait for Lebowski and Pynchon to do it right and we would have had a good many more long haired pot smoking P.I.’s. Like Adam Diment with his Philip McAlpine spy thrillers he only went so far with the idea of the hippie protagonist and to really have impact with something like this you can’t be timid, you have to commit.
He got about a third of the way there and then just couldn’t make the final push or didn’t trust the audience to follow if he did.
Simon’s books are as much of their time and place as Henry Kane or before him Brett Halliday, but they don’t quite break or change the mold enough to really change the game. In the end James Crumley pushed the envelope with his burned out far more than Simon did with his turned on one.
I liked the Wine books at the time well enough, but they don’t really age all that well, nothing is as tired as yesterday’s hipster. It’s the danger of following trends rather than setting them. Simon and Wine drew the line far too close to the standard private eye to start a revolution. They are footnotes and not cultural icons.
But I’m curious to see one published as late as 2003. An older book that went unpublished when the series ended and was finally unearthed perhaps?
February 2nd, 2023 at 1:08 am
February 2nd, 2023 at 1:14 am
Speaking of CHINATOWN in a post a few days ago, did anyone know that Robert Towne at one time was planning to make a movie of James Crumley’s DANCING BEAR? It never came to pass, but I wonder if Crumley’s work in the world of PI fiction would have been better known today. As fresh and new as his first book was, he’s almost forgotten today. Or am I wrong about that?
February 2nd, 2023 at 1:14 am
I also wondered where that last Moses Wine book came from. There may be a story behind that, but I have no idea what it is.
February 2nd, 2023 at 1:15 am
In any case, David, your take on Roger L. Simon and Moses Wine? Right on!
February 2nd, 2023 at 9:16 am
Dating myself, but watching the film THE BIG FIX when it first came out was pure joy.
February 2nd, 2023 at 9:35 pm
The movie version really had a feel for the aftermath of Sixties politics and how it felt later for those who participated in it (like me). For example, when Moses and his lawyer visit the radical couple in prison and have to block out the prison mics by singing so they can convey confidential information, they tune in to an oldies station because all four of them will know the words, and it’s Why Do Fools Fall in Love.Talk about shared culture! For me, like the books, the film is a period piece but grounded in at least a bit of melancholy reality.
February 2nd, 2023 at 9:44 pm
Now that I’ve found the film on YouTube, you’ve just moved it a few notches up on my To Be Watched list. Thanks,Jim!
February 3rd, 2023 at 11:04 am
I thought the movie was okay, but the book really resonated with me when I read the Pocket Books paperback in ’76. I still remember from which spinner rack I bought it and how excited I was to see a new hardboiled private eye paperback.
February 3rd, 2023 at 11:12 am
It is strange how small little unimportant things like this can stay with you forever. I remember buying a Richard Prather paperback from a spinner rack in the local supermarket in 1959. Not which one, mind you, but Shell Scoot, he’s a guy whose latest adventure really meant something.
February 3rd, 2023 at 11:23 am
Steve, I talk about that very thing and mention THE BIG FIX and the Moses Wine series, in fact, in this blog post:
https://jamesreasoner.blogspot.com/2012/04/favorite-bookstores-9-hometown.html
February 3rd, 2023 at 1:47 pm
We’re kindred spirits, James. I wish we’d known each other while growing up!
February 3rd, 2023 at 4:25 pm
I liked both the first novel and the film, but found myself less and less enthusiastic as I went onto the second and third and stopped there.
February 3rd, 2023 at 4:30 pm
I think I agree. I remember not caring for #3, PEKING DUCK, very much at all. It came after a five year gap from #2, and I think Simon may have somehow lost his way.
I sampled a couple of his later ones, but I don’t remember them, one way or the other.