Heiter-blasphemische Noir-Groteske mit nihilistischem Unterton. Mehr Kafka oder Dostojewski als Chandler oder Hammett. Tolle Ausgabe, gut übersetzt, sogar der deutsche Titel passt eigentlich besser zur Story als der Originaltitel "Honey Gal" der versucht das nachrangige, konventionelle Element in den Vordergrund zu stellen. Vielleicht ein Versuch das Ding doch als Krimi zu verkaufen. Wie in der satanische schwarzen Messe stellt Willeford alles auf den Kopf was der amerikanischen Gesellschaft heilig ist und dass auch noch viele Schwarze eine Messe feiern hilft der Doppeldeutigkeit des deutschen Titels zusätzlich. Für fans von American Psycho. Tolles Nachwort außerdem. Top!

Not everyone can be knocked out of the park. This is the one Willeford book (of the ones published during his lifetime) that left me completely ennervated. Nowhere near the same league as The Pickup or Burnt-Orange Heresy, but those are tough highwater marks to have to always shoot for. Maybe if I read it in the original pulp publication the time machine element would help, but otherwise I will not be going back to it.

Second or third read.
Previous review stands.

Started this last night.
This is a must read but requires patience.

It's hilarious and occasionally violent ...a couple of scary close-calls for our suddenly main character who suddenly finds himself leading a 1957 era Civil-Rights-era protest and engaging in Civil Rights activism.

Very bizarre, comical, potentially offensive as the "N" word is tossed around freely.
That Charles Willeford- what a cut-up!

This evening, after finishing the novel, I read Don Herron's entry on this novel.
Very interesting and very funny background.

Highest Recommendation!

"Go with God."

What a crazy crime novel this is! The Washington Post supposedly called this Charles Willeford's masterpiece, but it's not (that's "Miami Blues" or "The Burnt Orange Heresy" or maybe "Cockfighter"). What it is, though, is a fairly unhinged look at religion, viewed through the lens of pulp fiction.

The narrator is a scoundrel named Sam Springer who had a job as an accountaint and hated it with a passion. He writes a pulp novel that brings in a little money so he convinces his Midwestern wife to leave Ohio with him and move to South Florida so he can devote himself to writing. But once he gets there, he doesn't have much to write about. Meanwhile he grows bored with his wife, who talks about nothing but how much better things were up North.

One day he spots an item in the local paper that tells how a Central Florida monastery is closing up and the real estate being sold. He tells his wife this is his chance to score another great story idea, then he buys a one-way bus ticket to that town. The one-way ticket is a clue to his real intentions -- he does not plan to return home, ever.

At the monastery he meets an ex-military man who says he's the abbott. The abbott is a white man, like Springer. He explains how the demonination had wanted the monastery to produce both white and African-American ministers but because the leaders of the denomination are in Alabama they have lost control over what goes on there. He says he's assigned ministers to all the churches but one, an African-American church in a town Springer calls "Jax" but appears to be Jacksonville. Once the abbott takes care of that chore, he can sell the real estate with a clear conscience because there are no more monks.

Springer springs at the chance to become a phony minister, and so the abbott gives him an ordination certificate and a black suit with a backwards collar and sends him on his way. Springer rides the bus to Jax, and soon learns how powerful it is for people to think he's a minister, despite the fact that he doesn't believe in anything, much less God.

So far so good. This is a con man story with a bit of Old South racial and sexual complications mixed in, and a fun ride for a while. What spoils the believability of the book is what happens inside the church that Springer has been assigned to lead. The first time he takes the pulpit, he gets off to a bad start but recovers -- and suddenly he's a powerful orator in the mold of Billy Sunday and Billy Graham, even though he apparently never saw an evangelist before. He plays the avenging angel in the Sunday morning service and then the gentle redeemer in the evening service, and those two performances convince everyone that he's really a man of God.

If Willeford's intent was to mock the believers in the congregation, he fails. They all seem like sincere people, even the ones who sin and must seek forgiveness. One funny part occurs when something Springer conjured up just to spice up his sermon turns out to be true and he has to counsel a young couple who come to his door seeking forgiveness.

Soon Springer had gotten involved in a big civil rights battle, the lone white man advising a group of black ministers on how to run a bus boycott while also entertaining financial offers from the white racists on the other side.

Then, to complicate things even further, he falls in lust with a deacon's shapely wife and plots how he can run away with her. Here, too, believability suffers as Springer depicts himself as such a golden-tongued deceiver that he's able to convince the deacon that it's God's will that he impregnate the wife.

The ending of the book, bringing together these two threads, feels extraordinarily rushed although it does carry the usual Willeford irony. In passing, Springer notes that this has all taken place in the course of a single week. A WEEK! If only Willeford had let it stretch out to a few more days, maybe it would have been a tad more believable. I guess he was hoping we'd take all the unbelievable stuff on faith.

NOTE: Although Goodreads says I read this book four times, and that I read the paperback edition, both of those statements are false. I read the Kindle edition and three times Kindle thought I was done reading the book for some reason and automatically listed me as finished on Goodreads, and I can't find a way to get Goodreads to change either one.

I've read a fair amount of Willeford, and was thrilled to find a title I didn't know in my library. I guess there's a reason this one didn't get reprinted much- it's just so-so. The "Black Mass" of the title refers to a white preacher in the 1950s stationed at a "Negro church" (get it? Black mass? haw haw) and the slang of the characters in the book will probably make most modern readers uncomfortable. If you're new to Willeford, read the Hoke Mosely books instead.

No one writes a better crime novel. And You Know This

Willeford creates a vivid story in a few amount of words. This is more of a novella, or a long short story, than a book. But it's very engaging and engrossing. It's only 192 pages, but the characters are interesting, and the story keeps you on your toes. The main character, known throughout most of the book, is the Right Reverend Deuteronomy Springer, and he essentially has no redeeming qualities about him. The only reason I give this book 4 stars is that it's a but dated, as it was published in 1958, and you can tell it was written very much in the moment. I enjoyed seeing things like the cheapest meal at a 5-star restaurant costing $4.35, but it was slightly distracting. That doesn't really make sense, because I wouldn't criticize a Laura Ingalls Wilder book for saying that 5 cents was a lot of money to spend on a slate, but there was still something weird about it that I can't quite put my finger on. All in all, it's an interesting book, and I would definitely recommend it for fun reading, especially like on the beach.

Willeford always fun to read and the places he describes are familiar to me as I lived in LA and Miami.

Although strong on the usual Willeford formula that I know involving scarily capable sociopaths achieving goals on whims and ruining everything around them in the process, the plot is pretty bold as it deals with the protagonist becoming the white leader of an all black congregation in 60's Jacksonville, Florida. He then spearheads a charge to boycott the segregated bus lines raising hundreds of dollars a day. He then also discovers the young, impetuous and anti-religious young wife of one of his flock. Well, you don't need a calculator to figure out what happens next.
The Black Mass of Brother Springer is clever because not only does Springer take over as the leader of the all black church, but it refers to the cancer-like mass of indifference pointed out to him by one of the better written characters Abbott Dover. Dover explains that too much religion is bad because it makes one miserable and none at all makes one too happy. But with Springer there is nothing at all in his heart, which makes him the worst possible candidate to lead a church. Dover has other great lines on love/ authority/ writing and a great anecdote about movie theaters. But I digress.
I think as far as the time and place of the novel, the race relations are handled bluntly but honestly as Willeford perceived them. The really shitty people get exposed and in the end the tragedy is left purposely vague. It didn't bother me or stick out badly.
In the end however, it's just another character study albeit with an interesting new setting and plot. I don't think I'd recommend it as a starting point for Willeford though, not until you read some of his more charismatic and arguably less evil ones.

Érdekes könyv, több szempontból is. A sztorit első szám első személyű elbeszélő meséli, de a motivációi viszonylag homályosak a legvégéig, inkább csak a motiváció hiányát taglalja. Vicces a hitetlen fehér lelkész főszereplő egy teljesen fekete gyülekezet élén, bár néha elég valószínűtlen, mennyire pöpec imákat rögtönöz nulla vallási háttérrel.
Örültem, hogy erős befejezést sikerült írnia a szerzőnek, fájt volna, ha nem igazán fut ki semmire a sztori.

I don't have the energy to write a review, so here's a few thoughts on the novel:

* As Springer is searching, somewhat unconsciously, I feel like the book is searching as well. It flirts with many ideas but ultimately abandons almost all of them. Was that intentional?

* Was the book trying to make a point? I often felt it was trying to comment on race-relations, but the stance the novel takes ended up indifferent.

* Surprisingly light on violence, but that's a good thing here - When the violence comes, it has a certain impact because of it's scarcity.

* Great pacing in the last 2/3rds.

* What is it with this genre and the trope of a gorgeous woman who want to screw the protagonist as soon as they meet?

* It was entertaining as hell.

* It doesn't belong in the Noir Hall of Fame (is that a thing? That should be a thing.) but it's a good and quick read for anyone who likes the genre, or generally pulpy fiction from the middle of the 20th century.

* Why in the blue hell doesn't Hard Case Crime reprint Willeford? It seems like a no-brainer.

* Speaking of which, t's a shame that it's so hard to find a decent copy of this book. I read the edition published by blackmask.com which no longer exists. It boasts a plain, ugly black cover with the original cover art in a very small square amid the darkness. On the bright side, Wits-End books has came out with a (kind of pricey) edition under the title The Black Mass of Brother Springer. I haven't seen it in person, but it's probably your best bet if you want a physical copy.

* My eyes burn. I'm tired. It's 4 AM. Jesus, why am I awake?

Who would believe Pulp Religion?

Sam Springer has been ordained and called to a small church in the Negro (late 50s) part of Jax Florida. The Right Reverend "Deuteronomy" Springer was an ex-accountant and ex-novelist who had writer's block when he became a civil-rights leader in a bus boycott. Too soon, he becomes the focus of Klan activity, a lot of donation money, and a parishioner's wife. He arrived at this impasse of identity because in his respectable life he faced:

"My monthly payment of $78.60 on my house was five days overdue. My car payment on my three-year-old Pontiac was one month overdue. A small payment, only $42.50 per month, to be sure.... I owed the milkman $5.40 for the current month, the grocer for groceries delivered during the month, the telephone bill, the television repair bill for a new booster for the picture tube, and several other sundry bills, including an unfulfilled pledge at the Unitarian Fellowship Society."

Brother Springer quickly admits (to himself) that he has no "faith," but his sermons do inspire the faithful and fuels social protest. And, yet, true to Pulp formula, life is about booze, cigarettes, money, and sex.

Pulp Canterbury Tales

Pulp Decameron.

Pulp Fabliaux.

Willeford's writing contains all the classic elements of the older genres I allude to above. A theme I see emerging in his early works is the anti-hero embodying the archetype of the Destroyer who brings positive change.