What’s The Deal?

Hack is obsessed with the TV show Seinfeld but was so disappointed by the farewell episode that he novelized one of his own. It’s a typical Hack Werker story so saturated with gratuitous sex and violence that it’s virtually unreadable. The one good thing about it is that it’s so bad that it makes you appreciate how good the finale of Seinfeld actually was by comparison.

The Seductive Strikers

It’s Wordsmith Day, a holiday to celebrate the weavers of words, and Hack felt that was the perfect time to lend his support to the Writers Guild of America strike.

Hack joined the WGA in 1957 when he was hired to write additional dialogue for the cult classic “Teen Jailbait in Women’s Prison.” He was kicked out five years later for trying to form an ultra left-wing splinter union because he didn’t think the WGA’s tactics were violent enough. But he’s always been a supporter of collective bargaining and he knows that the provisions the union is asking for are fair and reasonable. Right will prevail.

Don’t look for Hack on any picket lines because he’s always far too hungover to get out of bed before 3:00 in the afternoon. But this novel is his means of saying that he’s behind the WGA all the way.

The Thin Man’s Wife

Myrna Loy was a huge star in the 1930s and 1940s best known for her onscreen partnership with William Powell, especially as Nick and Nora Charles in the popular “Thin Man” series of mystery movies. Hack fell in love with Loy in those films and grew to detest Powell, so he wrote this novel in which his signature team of great detectives, Jonny and Boris, have an affair with Nora Charles and her dog Asta so they plot to murder Nick. They ultimately come up with an outlandish plan where she trains Asta to brutally attack Nick, leaving him dead in a pool of his own blood. Since the police in those movies are nitwits and Nick isn’t around to solve the case, they get off scott-free.

He Liked to Watch

Hack was a big fan of “The Bob Newhart Show” in the 1970s but wrote this after he became obsessed with the concept that Suzanne Phleshette, who played his wife on the show, was much too beautiful to be believably married to the titular character. While most of Hack’s work based on television shows and movies resulted in legal action, no one could really argue with this one.