The Hector Lassiter novels (ten of them, including HEAD GAMES) frequently incorporate real people.
All of that carries over into HEAD GAMES, THE GRAPHIC NOVEL, coming Oct. 24, 2017 from First Second Books.
The range of “real characters” is prodigious, from the real-life personalities who dominate some of those books’ action, to those real people who are, well, fleeting, yet still influential.
Some are famous, some are even infamous.
Some are little known to the wider public, yet they affected the course of history and the Lassiter series sometimes aims to give these historical ghosts their proper due.
To give a little bonus context to those “characters” who appear in HEAD GAMES: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL, we’re delving into each, here and there, over successive Thursdays…
Emil spat. “It’s
a bitch to outlive your world, ain’t it?”
“It surely is.”
Emil looked at me
and then gave me a nasty smirk as he gestured at my cigarette. “Well, at least
I’ve had the good sense to take care of myself. I won’t end up old and a cripple.” The “like you will” was
implied.
—FROM HEAD GAMES:
THE NOVEL
A pure mercenary…
Some would have told you the old bastard was a blood-thirsty
murderer.
Emil Holmdahl was a professional hell-raiser for pay who
variously fought with Pancho Villa, and who later hunted Pancho for money.
Like I said, mercenary, to the bone.
He was also arrested and jailed for stealing the head of
Pancho Villa after desecrating the Mexican Revolutionary’s grave.
Most of the photos we have of the man are of a piece:
Strikingly similar shots taken over the years of a
straight-backed and aging brigand-for-hire, most often pictured full-figured
and standing, sporting whatever clothes and weapons were of the bloody moment and
vogue. Long face...long torso...disarmingly short legs, based on many shots.
But then, toward the end of his run, you get this disarming
glimpse of a much older Holmdahl, seated, with two grinning little girls looming over
either shoulder. Live long enough, and even mercenaries become grandpas.
As biographer Douglas V. Meed put it in his 2003 book about Holmdahl and the subject of Villa’s still missing noggin:
As biographer Douglas V. Meed put it in his 2003 book about Holmdahl and the subject of Villa’s still missing noggin:
“Little was heard about the head until 1952, when the United
States Secret Service located Emil Holmdahl living in retirement in Van Nuys,
California. They questioned him about a horde of gold bars reputedly dug up in
Mexico and illegally brought to the United States. The gold, the Secret Service
said, was rumored to have been found buried in Mexico as a result of a map
found on the skull of Pancho Villa. Nothing came of the investigation.”
The skull, the map, and Holmdahl, are all central to HEAD
GAMES: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL.
Next time: MARLENE DIETRICH
THE HECTOR LASSITER SERIES, AS PUBLISHED BY BETIMES BOOKS:
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