Fantastic Metropolis

10. The Tyranny of Evil Men (1965, Bantam)

Loftus’s most crafted and polished novel, it is also his longest and most self-assured book, written at the height of his confidence and control, during his “great pardon,” or “the season of homemade gravy,” as he called it in a letter to pal Gil Brewer. The writer took his time on this one and it shows. A recasting of Richard III as a gangster story, the plot is crafted, measured, even masterful. The characterization is complex and subtle. Some extant correspondence between Loftus and his editor indicates that the novel was originally considered for hardcover publication and the writer took this as a sign of “imminent breakthrough.”

Unfortunately, if not surprisingly, Tyranny’s release was utterly and irredeemably bungled. The cover art featured a crude and anachronistic illustration of a 1920s-era Tommygun-wielding cartoon mobster. Whether due to the timing or the hokey cover, the book received almost no reviews. And so, what should have been the novel that ushered Loftus into stability and respectability became instead the prelude to the tragedy that would derail the writer forever.

11. Man in a Suitcase #1: Brainwash (1969, Ace)

Adapted, very loosely, from the teleplay by Francis Megahy and Bernie Cooper, this almost incoherent novelization of a short-lived television show was the result of the writer’s sudden need for cash. The series had already been cancelled by the time the book finally hit the stands.

12. Limbo (1972, Lancer)

Loftus’s last book is, in its own unique way, a fitting end to a hard and, ultimately, nonsensical life. A hallucinatory roman a clef about a writer who suffers a breakdown following the death of his wife and child, it is a wonder that it was even published. The pseudo-psychedelic cover art indicates that Lancer was hoping to ride the last wave of late ’60s road and drug epics. But this dark, dense story is a wildly unstructured affair. The burned-out, cross-country journey back to the suffocating New England farm town where it all began recycles motifs from Refugee. The most coherent and compelling sections are the writer’s letters to an unnamed “future apologist.” In the charred remains of the writer’s childhood home, he meets the ghosts of all the people he has lost along the way. The ghosts are reading from the tattered paperback copies of the writer’s collected works. Issued during Loftus’s disappearance, it appears he never saw the published book.

Jack O’Connell is the author of the novels Box Nine, Wireless, The Skin Palace and Word Made Flesh.