Review of The Great Dick by Barry Maher

 

Some stories grab you from the first page and refuse to let go, and this one is exactly that kind of novel. The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon is a supernatural suspense laced with dark comedy, occult horror, and a touch of psychological unease, all set in the early 1980s. What makes it so compelling is not just the demons and rituals but the human drama—guilt, denial, and the desperate need to outrun the past—that drives every page forward.

In 1982, Steve Witowski is a failed songwriter and a fugitive living on borrowed time. His life takes a dangerous turn when he saves Victoria from a brutal assault, thinking it a single act of courage. But Victoria has just purchased a dilapidated church steeped in sinister history, and Steve quickly finds himself trapped in a nightmare of crypts, grave robbing, and occult rituals. As visions close in and the face of the man he killed begins to appear on his skin, Steve insists it’s all delusion—but the demon circling him grows stronger by the day. Wickedly funny, frighteningly inventive, and relentlessly suspenseful, this is a story where humor and horror collide, blurring the line between nightmare and reality.

Barry Maher is a writer, speaker, and storyteller whose career has been as unconventional as his fiction. He began as a poet and journalist before turning to public speaking, captivating audiences worldwide with a client list that spans major corporations and associations. His syndicated column Slightly Off-Kilter showcased his blend of wit and insight, while his work has been featured in outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. He’s also appeared on The Today Show, CNN, and CNBC. Learn more on his website or connect with him on Facebook.

Amazon: https://bit.ly/41Vv4a6

 Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/239608581-the-great-dick

MY REVIEW:

THE GREAT DICK BY BARRY MAHER WAS A COMPLETE SURPRISE TO ME. I DID NOT KNOW WHAT TO EXPECT SINCE I HAD NEVER READ ANYTHING PREVIOUSLY BY AUTHOR BARRY MAHER. IT WAS A FUN AND SUSPENSEFUL READ FILLED WITH ACTION AND SUSPENSE. THERE WAS SUPERNATURAL AND MYTHOLOGY THAT ADDS TO THE STORY. THERE WAS A LOT OF TWISTS AND TURNS THAT I DID NOT SEE COMING. I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO READING MORE BOOKS BY AUTHOR BARRY MAHER. 4 STARS

Back in the 60s . . .

 On Wednesday October 13^th, 1968, a faculty panel recommended the dismissal of Professor John Harris—in absentia, as no one at Harvard had seen or heard from him in weeks. Harris later bragged about delivering his final lecture on “one shitload and a half of LSD.” According to the recording made available to the faculty panel, this was the sum total of that lecture:

 “Good afternoon. Wow. American Literature, hunh? Let’s see. Moby Dick today. Right?”

 “Moby Dick?” asked a confused voice. “No. What happened to The Scarlet Letter?”

 “Right. Moby Dick,” Harris continued. “Great book. None of you have read it. None of you are going to read it. Nobody ever does. What you need to understand is that as far as I’m concerned—and I’m the fucking professor—Moby Dick is the same story as The Great Gatsby, which some of you may read. I call it, ‘the half-assed struggle of the individual to put their world to rights in the face of a failure that threatens to define their life.’ I think that’s from my thesis. Though maybe it’s not pretentious enough.”

Harris laughed. “Hey! How about this? Great Gatsby/Moby Dick: same story, different era, right? So, if someone someday tries to write that story for this generation, they should call it The Great Dick. That’d be perfect, wouldn’t it? The Great Dick. Alright, that’s got to be almost fifty minutes. See you next . . . whenever. Wow.”

 SUNDAY, MARCH 21, 1982

Two Women and One Corpse

“Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to lie well.”
                                                                                        —Samuel Johnson

 

CHAPTER 1

            

            Okay, let me start out by admitting that I was an asshole. I know that. The ludicrous amount of fame and acclaim and money I’ve had dumped on me since that time only makes it more glaring. The fact that we lived in a different world back in 1982 is no excuse. It was the same world. It just wasn’t the world we thought it was.

            I remember it was a Sunday night. Sundays always feel different. Looking back now and Googling a 1982 calendar, I’d guess it was Sunday, March 21^st. I remember waking up and within minutes making the decision to leave. Quickly, before I could change my mind, I eased myself out of the rickety hide-a-bed.

            Immediately, Maria rolled over into the spot I'd just vacated, breathing loudly through her nose and mouth, not quite snoring. I hate to say it, but she looked every minute of her thirty years. Her thick dark hair clung damply to her face; her heavy arms stretched outward. The cast on her left wrist looked like a giant manacle.

The grandfather clock beside the cigar store Indian read 1:37, though a few minutes before, it had chimed four times. That made as much sense as anything else in my life. I was thirty-five years old, a Harvard grad who’d spent the previous two years faking his way through a $13,500 a year job as a territory rep for the Richmond Tobacco company. That $13,500 was the most money I’d ever made. You’re probably thinking that when you adjust for inflation and translate that $13,500 into today’s dollars, it’s a lot more impressive.

No, it’s not.

I slipped on my jersey and my jeans and gathered the rest of my  things in my old gym bag.  Fortunately, enough moonlight crept in around the edges of the tattered drapes to give the room a dim glow. I wondered if it would be safe to hitchhike out of there, or if Indiana had already notified the California Highway Patrol that I was wanted.

My situation was bad. But not bad enough to, say, crawl into a grave with a rotting corpse.

That would come later.

Where Do You Get Your Ideas from?

A while back, I was speaking on an Asian cruise when I realized I could no longer figure out what the hands of the clock meant. The next day, during a session, I introduced the ship’s captain. Twenty minutes later I picked him out of the audience and asked him what he did for a living. (The uniform did look a tad familiar.) That same day, I gave up trying to understand foreign currency. Even American money was getting tricky. In Viet Nam, I handed a vendor two hundreds and a five for a $7.00 baseball cap. It was a very nice cap.

Back home, the first thing my doctor did was have me draw a clock face at ten to three. The second thing he did was take away my driver’s license. Then he sent me for an immediate MRI. The nurse there wouldn’t comment on the results, but when I asked where the restroom was, she said, “I can’t let you go in there alone.”

I explained that bathroom visitation was a particular expertise of mine.

“Like telling time?” she asked. “You need to talk to your neurosurgeon.”

“I have a neurosurgeon?” Just what I always wanted.

I also had a brain tumor—the size of a basketball. Or maybe the neurosurgeon said “baseball.” I wasn’t tracking too well at that point. Still, I quickly grasped he was planning on carving open my skull with a power saw.

“I don’t really need to tell time,” I said. “Or I can just buy a digital watch.”

Everyone said my neurosurgeon—or, as I thought of him, “Chainsaw Charlie”—was brilliant. My problem was that I’ve spent my life around intelligent people, and I’ve always believed human intelligence was overrated. To me, on a scale of everything there is to know in the universe, the main difference between Einstein and Koko the Wonder Chimp was that Einstein couldn’t pick up bananas with his feet. (As far as I know.) 

Still, I went under the knife—or in this case, the power saw.  Maybe I had a seizure. The doctors weren’t sure. That might explain what happened. Because I came out of the surgery with Lady Gaga singing non-stop in my head and an unforgettably vivid story, like a memory of something that I’d just witnessed.

Reacting to the intrusion,  I  suppose my brain could have given me Citizen Kane or a nice rom/com or a few episodes of Seinfeld. Instead I got open crypts, bizarre spells, sudden death and the Ralph Lauren version of the Manson Family. “How did my operation go? Well, I’m doing well, but the people in my head—or wherever they were—they went through Hell.”

Lady Gaga went away after a day or so. But the story stayed with me. And when I was able, I spent a couple of years putting it all down, working it out, trying to get it just right. And that became The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon.