The Rapist (1994, Walter E. Adams)

 

I'm starting to lose count of the times I thought I'd found the most gross and deranged book of all time, only to be proven wrong when a new competitor for that crown came along. I genuinely once thought that honour should be bestowed on Bamboo Guerillas by Guy N. Smith, then Eat Them Alive came into my life, then that was challenged for the upchuck cup by Shaun Huston's Chainsaw Terror, followed by The Cellar by the rump loving Richard Laymon. Now all of those have to potentially stand aside, because Walter E. Adams' The Rapist is in town, and the valuable life lesson I've learned here is that Walt can write the type of extreme book that would probably cause Guy N. Smith to choke on his pipe, cause Richard Laymon's scrotum to shrivel and cause Shaun Hutson to lose control of his sphincter muscle.

When people talk about Pierce Nace's Eat Them Alive, they have a tendency to claim that book feels like it was written by Travis Bickle...well listen you screwheads because HERE IS a book that truly feels like it was written by God's lonely man. HERE IS a book written by a man who would not take it anymore. HERE IS a book by a man who stood up against the scum. HERE IS a book by a man who has some bad ideas in his head. HERE IS a book by a man who just wants to go out, and you know, do something.

The Rapist was written in 1994, and despite the lurid cover- featuring a gun and a pair of panties- my expectations were that it would be all sizzle and no steak. After all the general consensus is that the heyday of the badly behaved, morally reprehensible sleaze novel was in the 1970s and early the 1980s, and that by the 1990s a degree of politically correct thinking had come into play. That memo clearly didn't reach Walter E. Adams, down in Casselberry, Florida.

The first sign that we're in for something exceptional here, comes even before the book begins. Since right at the start of The Rapist there are full page adverts for other Walter E. Adams tomes. The kind of blurbs that are usually trotted out at the end of books, where the hope is that you've been sufficiently impressed by writer's work to check out further books by the same author. Unconventionally placing these ads at the start, does at least prep you, as much as anyone can be prepped, for what's in store with The Rapist. Other books in the Adams oeuvre include THE BLACK HOODS ('Sharon Gray didn't think the shame and terror of her ordeal would ever end..and it never did') and the futuristic, scare novel AMERICA 2005 ('obsessed with sex and filled with Christian hatred, America 2005 is the story that is rocking the nation').

The Rapist initially focuses on Jerry Graff, a newspaper journalist who a few years prior had been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, possibly for swearing. Chicago is currently being terrorized by a serial rapist and killer. Dubbed 'The Laughing Rapist' by the press, the giggling, egotistical sex offender embarks on a letter writing campaign to politicians, journalists and clergymen. He also takes to the airwaves, bragging about his exploits on late night phone in shows, claiming "his victims had loved it when he had stuck his dick up their ass. And how they had screamed in delight as he screwed them, and screwed them, repeatedly, until they had literally begged for more". Newspaper editor Sandy Lavelle wants Jerry to write a scathing piece condemning The Laughing Rapist and the soft, do-gooding system that is allowing a tidal wave of rape and murder to engulf America. Trouble is, it's Jerry's day off, and he's woken up in a bad mood. 'He was truly sorry another victim, another body has popped up, but the paper had a staff qualified to handle this weekend shit'. Sandy is one determined newspaper editor, but she's up against a brick wall of resistance when it comes to the stubborn Jerry. "He was flat assed tired of covering this grotesque shit. Particularly since the public kept voting liberal shitheads into office whose highest level of intelligence was to coddle the bastards who raped'.

Incredibly the initial forty odd pages of The Rapist just consists of Jerry and Sandy screaming at each other in her office. In theory it should be terribly boring, and yet it's utterly captivating as these two hotheads go at it in a relentless, expletive ridden avalanche of anger. Who is to blame for the likes of The Laughing Rapist? Just about everyone according to Jerry and Sandy's verbal boxing match. One which firmly aims its wrecking ball at liberal shitheads (the book really loves that term) and the members of the public who vote for liberal shitheads. In fact in Jerry's book the only thing worse than a rapist is a liberal shithead. However, according to Jerry, the gutless church must also shoulder the blame, as should psychiatrists. Not to mention the women's liberation movement, who Jerry accuses of not doing enough to safeguard women from rapists "if women are too lazy, apathetical or stupid to fight for their own safety, legally or judicially, then women will indeed be left to suffer the consequences of their own folly". Sandy, for her part, thinks that foreign aid spending is to blame. "Let Japan, China, Mexico and Russia take care of themselves. Let's force these bastards to put some fucking anti-rape laws on the books that mean something. Either that, or I will be a rape victim". All Jerry wants to do though is quit the paper, run off to a tropical island and sell out by writing "some torrid piece of trash on the secret sex dreams of the modern housewife".

The catalyst for this heated debate is the abduction, rape and murder of Leslie Stoner, daughter of powerful Senator Dan Stoner. Sandy thinks that the killing of one of Chicago's elite will act as a wakeup call for those in power to do something about the rape epidemic. Despite being a friend of Senator Stoner, and having known Leslie since she was a baby, Jerry however remains desensitized, especially since Stoner 'voted liberal on crime legislation' therefore is now paying the price. As for Leslie, Jerry is slightly more compassionate, even though she was the daughter of a liberal shithead "sure I feel sorry for Leslie. She was such a lovely girl. But shit. Piss on Washington".

There are so many times in The Rapist where you swear this book has to have been written in the 1970s and only got published in the 1990s. It is so deeply in tune with that 1970s, Dirty Harry and Death Wish era, conservative backlash against street crime and liberalism. The only elements that pull you out of thinking this a 1970s book, and instead firmly timestamp it as a product of the 1990s are references to AIDS (handled with all the sensitivity you'd expect) and Calvin Klein Jeans. Somehow everything bad that happens in this book turns out to be the fault of the Calvin Klein Jeans Company. No spoilers from me as to why, but trust me it's absolutely priceless.

Jerry isn't for turning ("he was sick of this shit. So tired of it. So distraught by it. What the fuck did Sandy think another editorial would accomplish") especially since his prior put downs of the Laughing Rapist had drawn the rapist's ire. Something which resulted in the sex offender putting pen to paper 'I ought to blow your ass away. Now you've fucked with me. Piss me off again and I damn well might just strip your wife, fuck your daughter and make your mother suck on my cock'. His wife and daughter's safety aren't however among Jerry's concerns. Since the Laughing Rapist only seeks out sexually attractive women, Jerry considers his wife too old for that sort of thing, while his daughter isn't 'the slim hipped type' therefore is judged not feminine enough for the rapist to bother with!
After a gargantuan struggle to convince Jerry to give a damn, Sandy finally persuades him to pick up the pen, and do it for all the women in America who aren't affiliated with liberal shitheads. "Jerry, I'm not a stab of meat. I'm not a worthless bitch. I do not want to be raped. But the way things exist now, I'm scared shitless to walk the city streets".

Adams then makes the peculiar decision to go backwards on the narrative, by depicting Leslie's ordeal at the hands of The Laughing Rapist. Something which by rights should have been at the start of the book. Its placement here nullifying any suspense Adams tries to generate over whether she'll survive, since we know Leslie is a dead woman from the outset. Earlier in the book there had been some crude, insensitive references to rape. Even so, Adams had whipped up such a hurricane of fury over rapists in this book, that you'd been inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, and chalk that up as an attempt to rub the reader's nose in the abhorrent nature of The Laughing Rapist. Once you get to the rape itself though, his motivations become more questionable, especially when you realize that of the book's 207 pages, 96 of those are set aside to depict Leslie's humiliation, rape and murder. In keeping with the book's out of time- more 1970s than 90s- quality, the mercilessly explicit depiction of sexual assault quickly turns this into the literary equivalent of the ugliest hardcore XXX roughies of the 1970s. We're talking nastiness here on the level of Hot Summer in the City, Appointment with Agony and On the Street.

Adams writes page after page of sexual abuse. This section of the book largely taking place from Leslie's perspective, with the exception of a handful of insights from the rapist himself, which are the open sewer that you'd expect ('the thrill of beating a bitch like this always gave him a hard-on. A couple of times he'd actually creamed his pants while doing it'). Adams provides a harrowing, blow by blow account of Leslie's thoughts. How the rapist makes her feel dirty, the shame of knowing her parents will read all the details of her rape in the papers, her concerns that her fiancée won't love her anymore, her fear of ending up 'stuffed in a garbage bag where stray dogs and snakes would feast on her flesh'. She also wishes that she'd never been born, that she could die, but then shamefully realizes that not even death will allow her any dignity 'the autopsy would show she had sucked his dick in the hope that she might yet live'. In spite of her body reacting otherwise 'in her agonizing stew she cursed herself for the pointed hardness of her nipples', Leslie though still has some fighting talk left in her "who the fuck did he think he was? To threaten her this way? To scare her shitless?...She loathed him without compare. Twice now she had nearly puked in his face".

A problem with Adams' writing, which is apparent from the outset and grows even more as the book progresses, is that all his characters speak with the same voice...and it's a voice that terrifying in its intensity. All of his characters behave like Klaus Kinski yelling at an audience for refusing to believe he is Jesus, everyone rides the merry-go-round of hatred, this book is like a banshee screaming into your ear for 48 hours straight.
Later on in the book we get a new character, Detective Lieutenant Matty Lyle, a friend of Jerry's who is also pretty much a clone of him, and ‘natch also hates liberals. Matty's stand out characteristic though is that he still carries a hard-on for Jerry's wife Mary, who was his childhood sweetheart. Mary was the source of his earliest wet dreams, Matty even got to feel her up when they were both 14, allowing him 'to finally be, as it was known around the neighborhood, a Tit Man'. Matty is a class act.

Just as it is difficult to reconcile the fact that Eat Them Alive was written by an elderly lady, The Rapist is another example of a book's author going against expectations. Walter E. Adams was born on May 7th 1943 in Philadelphia. Relocating to Florida in 1972, Adams founded Gospel Ministries International, a non-profit Christian outreach charity and remained a minister until he went to meet his lord and savior in 2006, at the age of 63. Adams' bibliography alone reveals a man of interesting contradictions, he authored Christian books, an anti psychiatry book, Pro-Life books, then a series of books about how to win at Blackjack. The earliest book of his I've been able to find a trace of is 'Infant Joe' a Pro-Life tearjerker from 1982, told from the point of view of an unborn fetus. 

Adams appears to have sporadically published books during the 1980s, before returning with a vengeance in the 1990s with a succession of rape obsessed crime novels. The Rapist isn't exactly the kind of book you expect a Christian minister to write, to put it mildly. In contrast I recently picked up a second hand horror novel called The Oath (1995), which upon further examination turned out to be the work of a Christian author, Frank Peretti. The Oath certainly wasn't a bad novel, by any means, but it did behave as you'd expect for a book written by a man of religious conviction, it was light on sex and bad language, very anti adultery and very faith based. On the other hand, The Rapist is what I suppose you could call an undercover Christian book. Subtlety isn't a word that could ever be used within a hundred mile radius of this book, but The Rapist does slyly conceal the Christian side of its personality till the eleventh hour. For the most part there is little evidence of a Christian agenda at work here. Jerry is an atheist, Matty lusts after his best friend's wife, various victims ask for God's help, and get no answer. At one point, Leslie even compares the booming, controlling voice of the rapist to that of God "as though it were God himself who was reaching down from heaven to blister her heart and mind with His anger". A surprisingly blasphemous comparison for a Christian minister to make in print. If you are alert, I suppose you could just about detect the hand of a Christian author, by how vehemently anti-Christian Adams makes the despicable rapist. In a book full of quotably offensive lines, Adams might well hit his zenith, when he has The Laughing Rapist recall the violation of a Christian woman "She had tried to talk to him about God's love. He'd nearly shit in her fucking face". Evidently, Walt could give Anthony Perkin's character in Crimes of Passion a run for his money when it came to potty mouthed clergymen.

I'm always suspected that Pierce Nace's Eat Them Alive was an example of accidental extremism, and that Nace assumed that all horror novels were just nonstop gore, and therefore wrote accordingly. My gut instinct is that something similar was at play here, and that The Rapist represents a straight laced, anti-porn, Christian minister's idea of what dirty paperbacks were all about... demeaning sex, dirty talk and off the scale bad language. I don't for a minute think that this was aimed at the same crowd as Walt's Christian and Pro-Life books, who'd probably only last a few pages into The Rapist before throwing it in the trash. Here Walt appears to be preaching to the perverted, rather than the converted. Tellingly, while his Pro-Life books make his religious career a selling point, there's no mention of that side of his life in his rape books. Instead these books look to have been his way of reaching out to sinners and sleazehounds, hooking them in with all this roughie sex and lewd language, then throwing a come to jesus moment their way. The Rapist only revealing its true motivation at the end of the book, when a major character accepts Christ into his life, plunging another character into a spot of soul searching over whether they are leading the kind of life they can claim to be proud of when they one day come before God. A question Walt obviously wanted to also directly address to the reader. Although even without this Christian coda, I think that The Rapist is the kind of book that would leave the average reader wondering just what they were doing with their life anyway. The abrupt move from violent, sleazy porn to bible thumping is such a wild, tonal shift though, it would be like Estus Pirkle showing up at the end of Waterpower, addressing the audience head on, and asking them to accept Christ into their lives, otherwise all their loved ones will likely suffer the fate of being hunted down and given enemas. If Rapists Tire You, What Will Horses Do?
The ending of The Rapist is an absolute doozy, somehow managing to be both spirituality uplifting and utterly nihilistic in the same breath, and would appeal equally to Christians and misogynists alike. If you like Jesus, and hate women, you're gonna love The Rapist.

Walt then was here writing sleaze for God's sake, I shudder to imagine the dark places he had to go to in order to pull this book off. He was, in the words of the song, The Impossible Dream, "willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause". It is such an inherently filthy read though, that you do fear he got a little bit contaminated by the slime he was writing about along the way. Whatever the cost to Walt himself, this is a book that literally wants to bring the reader to their knees. Just make sure that The Laughing Rapist isn't around before you assume that position.