We would give enormous thanks to Barry Maher for providing a copy of The Great Dick and the Dysfunctional Demon for review.
First things first, what’s the deal with horror authors and women? This book has two women in the main cast, one whose main function is to be awful to the protagonist and one who exists solely to be less attractive than the awful one. To be fair, everyone in this book is awful, which was another one of my main problems with it. There are no likable characters, no one to root for. This isn’t accidental, the characters all know they’re terrible people but that still doesn’t make them fun to be around.
A personal aside: Sometimes when I try to wrap my mind around a confusing concept I figure out a way to explain in “in Star Trek.” I can explain anything in Star Trek. Remember “Threshold”, that episode of Voyager where (for stupid reasons that don’t matter here) Paris and Janeway turn into salamanders, have babies which they abandon, and it’s never mentioned again? Was that a good episode? No. In fact, it’s widely regarded as one of the worst in the entire franchise. Did I enjoy the hell out of it and do watch it periodically after eating too many gummies? You’re damn right.
That’s what The Great Dick is: enjoyable, but not good. Certainly not as good as the author, Barry Maher, might have been planning when he decided to make the title a mashup of The Great Gatsby and Moby Dick.
The Great Dick, why is that the title? A good question which is explained in a prologue, which has otherwise no bearing on the rest of the novel. I suppose you could make a case that this book is a combination of the two; and you could have a little debate about who in the story is Ishmael, Ahab, the whale, Daisy, or Jay Gatsby. You could, but would you want to?
The plot, I will say, is pretty good. The story is fun and engaging, I cared about the mystery for its own sake, not because I wanted the characters to succeed.
In a nutshell, it’s the early 1980s and Steve Witowski is on the lam after a drug deal gone bad. It’s early in the morning/middle of the night and he’s about to ghost the woman who drove him to across the country to a small California town when he stumbles upon another woman being attacked by someone who seems to be a random vagrant except he’s muttering in Latin and wielding a dagger with the names of ancient gods engraved in it.
Steve ends up employed by said woman, Victoria, working as a handyman for her fixing up an old church turned brothel/cult turned abandoned brothel after the townsfolk murdered the proprietor (or did they?) Victoria inherited it when her husband, a motivational speaker of sorts, died. Of course she knows more than she’s letting on and looking for specific items she doesn’t want Steve to know about. Which seems reasonable since he’s basically a rando criminal she just met.
As the story progresses Victoria’s requests get stranger (light grave robbing), other creepy men who also work for Victoria start showing up, and the house itself gets eerier and eerier. Through all this, Steve doesn’t leave despite and perhaps because, he hasn’t actually been paid and he very much wants to sleep with Victoria who has been very clear that she does not want to sleep with him. I’m not going to spoil the ending; but credit where it’s due, it is pretty good.
Also, in the interest of full disclosure I should mention that at the same time I was reading this on my commutes to and from work; I was also reading The Haunting of Hill House each night before bed. It’s possible that reading what is widely regarded as one of the best horror novels ever written puts The Great Dick at a disadvantage in terms of my review; but I’m standing by everything I’ve written here.
All of which is to say, if you’re looking for a book where a woman in a bikini closes her eyes, moans, and says, “Mmm chocolate cum all over my body,” when she knows full well that what is on her body is suntan oil, have I got a book for you.