CROC by David James

"In the twenties it started," Boggs began, but then he stopped. Andrea was staring at him, disbelief in her eyes, but waiting for him to continue.

"All the rich bitches from uptown were raising hell, going to parties, driving their fast cars, putting in swimming pools in their penthouse places. But it got boring after awhile. No one was satisfied. They wanted something new, something different. So some of them began stocking their pools with baby alligators and crocodiles. Only the fad didn't last long, so they dumped the things down the sewers rather than kill them."

David Hagberg returns as David James for another pseudonymous thriller, following up his disaster novel Blizzard with some real creature feature carnage in Croc! NYC sewer worker Boggs loses his partner Fascetti to an impossible monster after probing a cave-in off the cross-town line, and after almost getting chomped himself he's press-ganged by Fascetti's widow into returning to the sewers with a .45 to kill the beast!

Things do not go as planned. In Hagberg's universe this is down to both institutional problems and the vagaries of the personalities involved - and boy does Croc have some characters! Boggs is a rummy lifer working the shit detail in the Sanitation Dept., and Hagberg spins some eloquent characterization as he contemplates what amounted to his life, staggering knee-deep through the pitch black sewers (with a shitty '70s flashlight, batteries draining fast) pursued by the monster croc - dreams, failures (many), and what-ifs and could-have-beens, some involving his dearly departed partner Fascetti, who almost (almost!) named Boggs his firstborn's godfather.

If you ever had to use these, you know Boggs is doomed ...

Andrea Fascetti, meanwhile, was all set for a good life as a good wife, and now has to clean up this fucking mess, which she splits 50/50 between the croc and Boggs. Her iron core - hidden inside a Talia Shire type beauty which the male characters are by turns enraptured, aroused, and a little frightened by - might never have come out if not for this tragedy, and makes one consider the multitude of invisible lives of midcentury housewives, forever standing behind their husbands. As things spin out of control, the authorities finally plunge into action, and here again Hagberg draws us in with a cast of cops, scientists, and bureaucrats who could have been cardboard cutouts but instead are all either a bunch of fuckups, barely holding it together, or just plain weird! His reptile expert Koch gives us just a light info dump on crocodilians, telling us that based on size and disposition our killer is most likely a saltwater crocodile - he's thriving down in the sewer, too, because they like brackish water! This quick rundown is typical of Hagberg's light touch - he never lingers on genre conventions when we've got enough of an idea to keep moving. In fact, even though his Croc ultimately has a low body count comparable to Katz's Alligator, Hagberg moves things so fast and furious that we never feel cheated. The setting, characters, and monster feel authentic without over explanation, and Croc can rest comfortably as an accomplished monster mash right next to John Sayles and co.'s 1980 film Alligator  - though Croc lacks that film's sharp satire, aiming for more resigned humor from Hagberg's cast of screwups and freaks. Hagberg does get some sly jabs in with Bremberger, the up-and-coming pol whose attempts at self-promotion through crocodilian crisis get shot down at every turn.

Croc (or Croc') was originally graced with the crackerjack man-vs-beast cover above, courtesy its 1976 debut from Belmont Tower Books. The New English Library edition lacks a certain dynamism by comparison, despite a decently fierce croc and a hard-to-see hand slipping beneath the sewage. NEL doesn't miss a trick plugging its moneymaking Crabs series from Guy N. Smith though!

Croc is available to read and download at archive dot org. For some lean, gritty thrills, Croc earns 4/4 stars.

New English Library, 1977 (original pub. 1976)