By Lee Pfeiffer
It may come as news that Samuel Fuller, the macho director of such films as The Naked Kiss, Shock Corridor, Pickup on South Street, The Steel Helmet and The Big Red One, had a second career as a novelist. Fuller, whose films were largely under-appreciated in America during his lifetime, went into self-imposed exile in France, where his work was exalted. He was nursing some hurt feelings over Paramount refusing a theatrical release for his final film "White Dog", a 1982 drama that dealt with sensitive racial issues that frightened the marketing team at the studio. In France, Fuller's literary endeavors also found a receptive audience there. His final novel before his death in 1997 was titled Brainquake. Written in the early 1990s, it centers on a bag man for the mob who suffers from periodic seizures, the result of a bullet wound to the brain. He ends up falling for a fellow mobster's widow and absconds with $10 million in mob money, an act that leads to a contract being placed on him. The book was published in France but never in the English language. Now, the Hard Case Crime publishing group will debut the novel in August to celebrate Fuller's birthday. It marks the first time the novel will be available in English. The book boasts an appropriately impressive noirish cover painting by Glen Orbik that harkens back to the golden age of pulp fiction. There is also an afterword by publisher Charles Ardai, who provides an interesting an informative overview of Fuller's life and career as well as the background story on the writing of this book. Highly recommended.
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