Panther! by Alan Ryan

Panther!
By Alan Ryan
1981 New American Library
Paperback, 212 pages

                To promote his new film Panther, a studio head plans on having twenty live, wild black panthers, freshly imported from Africa, caged in the lobby of the theater on opening night. What could possibly go wrong?

                Granted, I prefer gory action to characterization, but Ryan gives us a collection of good characters to enjoy while we await the inevitable. Once the cats are loose, some (not all) hell breaks loose and Ryan occasionally lets himself slip into Guy N. Smith mode, where he introduces new characters only to dispatch them a few pages later. I live for that shit. Of particular interest is a backfired blowjob scene.

                Considering the mayhem doesn’t kick in until well after the halfway mark, Panther! still manages to stay consistently interesting, if a bit predictable at times. Some plotline shit gets a little convenient by the end, but the story never drags. And I never once rolled my eyes that they were able to capture twenty wild black panthers for this promotional stunt.

                “Black panthers” are a color morph of the leopard in Africa and Asia (and jaguars in the Americas), a fact that is given less than a full sentence in the book. Though roughly 10% of leopards are prone to a degree of melanism, it seems highly unlikely that Ransome, the panther hunter, could have been so successful. But who cares, right?

                So, there you have it… today’s science fact and a thumbs up for Panther! The cover art is by Tom Hallman.

This review originally appeared in Midnight Magazine #8, July 2021.

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