Feiler’s third wrestling novel shifts genre but remains an easy read that should hold your interest. Ambush At The Palace is set in the same universe (a fictionalised late-70s Florida territory) as his previous books on Gorpp The Grappler, but puts less emphasis on the sci-fi element. Instead this is a crime thriller kicked off by a robbery of the man returning the night’s takings from a wrestling show. The wrestling element is more of a backdrop this time, with Gorpp a cameo player, though with the interesting perspective that to the characters in this volume, whether he is really an alien is a mystery on the same level as to how much Native American heritage a headdress-wearing grappler really has. The story develops smoothly and at a brisk pace, with the main criticism being that it occasionally goes into too much detail about pricing or times that feels like an unnecessary attempt to prove that the fine detail of points such as timelines are indeed internally consistent. The ending of the book also felt a little rushed, though this was partially a matter of expectations as the final 15% or so of the book is actually a sample of…
Proving you can tell a story based on research, this is something of an undersung title. As we’ve covered in many reviews, historical wrestling books often fall in to a couple of traps. One is to conduct meticulous research and then be so afraid to let any of it go to waste that you bombard the reader with irrelevant detail, drowning out any narrative. The other is to concentrate on wrestling storylines or to rely on a wrestler’s recollection, which can be plagued by faulty memories or outright BS. Vicek avoids these traps by drawing source material from as many angles as possible, including public records, interviews and relevant sections from other wrestling publications. Perhaps the most extreme example is when he dug out a newspaper article showing a young Dick the Bruiser lifting a child at ringside and then tracked down the child — now a retiree — to get his recollection of the incident. The results is a book that is much about breadth as depth. It’s by no means a comprehensive career chronology, but rather aims to capture as many aspects as possible of a wrestling character and the man that portrayed him. In particular, the book…