Category: Movies and Television

This novel was inspired by a 1946 movie called Lady in the Lake, in which the action unfolds entirely through the camera, which represents the eyes of detective Philip Marlowe voiced by actor Robert Montgomery (whose face is only shown in once scene where Marlowe is looking in a mirror). Hack was watching the movie when Jonny came in with a new haircut which his barber cut 1/16th of an inch too short, so it stood up like the Bride of Frankenstein.

We told Hack that the gimmick would never work in a novel, since it lacked the visual component of a movie, and he gave up on it two-thirds of the way through, devoting the last 75 pages t0 yet another rambling account of his abusive father. But his publisher needed a new Hack Werker book so he just had Hack expand the anal sex scenes in chapters 6 and 14, and it wound up selling well in the Bible Belt.