Story Behind The Book
The Quintessence of Quick is the continuation of the story that begins with The Rough English Equivalent, with small-town Southern boy Jack Mason evolving over twenty centuries from run-of-the-mill human to time-traveling posthuman. He returns from 4321 a.d. to the locale of his youth, where Jack's made friends with a former Nazi spy and the daughter of his lover...
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<strong>Take this to the bank; this is a compelling summer read that you'll talk about all year! The combination of urban sophistication, freewheeling sex, humor, down-home color, undercover military action and science fiction picks up a full head of steam in Stan Hayes's The Quintessence of Quick. All these facets were there in its predecessor, The Rough English Equivalent (which I plan to reread), but now Jack Mason, the book's main character, has achieved what people back then called "man's estate," the term wielding a double-aged sword in his case. Jack, an impressively well-endowed(!) young man, inherits the entire estate of his boyhood mentor, Moses Kubielski (a.k.a. Pete Weller), the bulk of which consists of a beer distributorship in his hometown of Bisque, (BIS-kew) Georgia. Receiving a buyout offer of some $8 million from the business's closest competitor, Jack will closethe deal, on behalf of both himself and Moses, who's now languishing in Cuba after his successful "death" in a phony plane crash. He's by no means destitute, however, disappearing with $3 million in Nazi-owned American currency in 1941 and dropping it into a Swiss bank branch in Baltimore before hiding out for the duration of WWII. <br /><br />The two pals reunite in the Miami suburb of Coconut Grove, along with the daughter of Moses' Baltimore lover, Linda, who Moses put through Johns Hopkins. She and Jack met on a trip to New York that Moses organized around a brewer convention and 16-year-old Jack's regular Summer visit to his dad. Having a married lover who owns a fair-sized boat, she's pursued all the necessary licensing from the Coast Guard to qualify as its skipper. The sexually-precocious Jack visits her on the day after a cruise around Manhattan, and they become periodic lovers during his Summer and Christmas visits to his dad. By the time Moses decides that he must get out of Bisque, she's had it with New York, too. Bringing her into his plot, he gives her the money to buy a big boat, a sportfisherman, and rendezvous with him and a former Nazi colleague as they ditch their plane in the Atlantic, blow it up and motor away. <br /><br />Things happen fast after Castro takes over Cuba, and Moses (now back to his Pete Weller identity) and Linda contact Jack from a Coconut Grove house. He joins them there, but must get back to Bisque to close the deal on the beer distributorship. Returning up the Intracoastal Waterway in Linda's boat, they continue their fitful love affair as they journey to Bisque via Augusta, Georgia and the Savannah River. While they're there, Jack gets his draft notice, a setback to the trio's plans to set up a Miami-based air taxi service. They decide to pursue the plan anyway, Jack's service time seen as a minor problem. One complication: Jack decides to take the advice of his uncle, a retired Naval Aviator, and join the Navy's flight program, which will take him away from the new business for five years instead of two. On the plus side, he'll be the best-qualified pilot of the three when he returns. <br /><br />Before reporting to the Navy, Jack visits his mother, Serena, who's returned to New York, their home before Jack's father joined the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos. Giving two Tiffany ladies a hand with delivering her just-completed bust of the celebrated Clare Boothe Luce, he's introduced to his mother's new client. They begin an affair that afternoon in the Luces' Waldorf-Astoria suite. After that, things really take off, Clare arranging a meeting with a CIA bigwig that gives the new air taxi business a major boost. It also leads to Jack's partners getting swept up in the JFK assassination, and here's where the science fiction kicks in. Turns out Jack's boyhood "imaginary friend," Flx, turns out to be his (much) older self, having lived for more than 2,000 years by dint of a long series of swapping out body parts and other elements, capping the process by achieving a massless state through quantum teleportation. His first exercise is rescuing Jesus from crucifixion and finding him a berth in a vintage galaxy cruiser, which also becomes Pete's and Linda's refuge after Pete's forced to kill three JFK assassins. <br /><br />There's so much more. Flx, now called Nick (don't let's go there) alerts Jack, a hurricane hunter pilot in 1963, to the upcoming JFK assassination. I won't ruin the ending for you, just suffice it to say that Hayes is master of his material. Can't imagine where the Jack Mason Saga will go from here, but I expect I'll be on board; you'll absolutely LOVE this guy!</strong> <br />