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I am late, I know. Well, you get what you pay for. Also, my new career as a freelancer is keeping me busy, which is a good thing to be in a gig economy. Right?
Turn on the Heat by A.A. Fair
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
When Erle Stanley Gardner wasn’t churning out Perry Mason mysteries, he was also writing lots of other books. Under the name A.A. Fair, he wrote 29 pulp mysteries featuring the team of private detectives Bertha Cool and Donald Lam, who ran against the archetype of hard-boiled detectives in that Cool was a middle-aged plus-size woman and Lam was a scrawny little guy who gets beat up a lot.
I tried Cool and Lam once before via another Hard Case Crime reprint, Top of The Heap, and it was okay enough that I picked up this one, which starts with a mysterious “Mr Smith” hiring the agency to locate a woman named Amelia Lintig – the wife of a Dr James Lintig – who disappeared 21 years ago following a small-town scandal involving her husband and his nurse. It doesn’t take long to work out that (1) Smith is really Dr Lintig, and (2) someone doesn’t want Lam poking around trying to find Mrs Lintig.
Things get increasingly complicated to the point that it’s gets difficult to work out who is doing what – especially with Lam trying to keep Cool and a few other characters from knowing what he’s really up to in order to give them plausible deniability. It’s not bad, necessarily – Gardner knows how to keep things moving along – but I can’t say I found the resolution all that satisfying, or at least the way Gardner builds up to it. And I don’t find Cool and/or Lam to be all that endearing as characters, either. Credit for doing something different, but I’m thinking I may stick with the Perry Mason books from here on in.
Help, I Am Being Held Prisoner by Donald E. Westlake
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was recently reprinted by Hard Case Crime, which has been reprinting a lot of Westlake’s more obscure and/or out-of-print novels. In this one, Harry Künt is a compulsive practical joker who goes a step too far and ends up sentenced to two years in prison. By happenstance, he ends up as part of a group of criminals who have access to a secret tunnel that leads outside. But the object isn’t to escape – it’s to be able to go outside and live a normal life while they serve their time. Oh, and it’s also the perfect alibi for knocking over two banks in the town next to the prison.
It's a comedy. Much of the fun (and suspense) comes from the fact that Harry is not a career criminal and is terrified of being roped into an armed bank robbery, but he’s even more terrified of the tunnel gang bumping him off for knowing too much if he backs out. Meanwhile, the warden is on his case because some practical joker is planting notes around the prison with the same message – “Help I Am Being Held Prisoner” – and how many practical jokers could there be in the same prison?
The secret tunnel alone is a great premise, and Westlake has a lot of fun with it, especially as Harry tries to think up ways to prevent the robbery without the others catching on. Westlake keeps the pace moving along nicely for the most part. The ending is tied up a little too neatly, but overall it's an entertaining read. In fact, leave it to Westlake to write perhaps the most fun prison novel I’ve ever read.
Dangerous Visions by Harlan Ellison
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is probably one of the more famous short-story anthologies, partly because it was edited by Harlan Ellison (who accepted only new and unpublished stories for it, which in itself was unusual), and partly because it served as a demarcation from the Golden Age of classic science-fiction to the New Wave of SF, although many of the stories here aren’t really SF, but then that’s kind of the point – SF was transforming into something broader and more experimental.
One interesting thing about reading it now for the first time is how many of the authors here are SF staples today but were relatively unknown at the time or had yet to write their career-defining work – Norman Spinrad, Samuel Delaney, Larry Niven, Philip K Dick, Roger Zelazny, etc. As for the stories themselves … well, like any anthology, there’s something for everyone but not everything is going to work. And for the most part, the ones that worked for me were the ones by authors I’ve already read (Spinrad, Dick, Zelazny, Robert Bloch, Frederick Pohl, and of course Ellison, who also contributed a story as a callback/sequel to Bloch’s submission). The majority of the stories are at best average and in many cases, meh. On the bright side, the good stories are worth wading through everything else.
Ironically, the biggest weakness of the collection is Ellison himself, who clogs up the proceedings with long-winded intros that are as much about himself as the author or story he’s introducing. (Someone's probably already made the joke that the book would be half as long if you left out all the Ellison intros.) I realize it’s all part of the Ellison brand (it’s not lost on me that the book’s running head prints his name as Harlan Ellison®), and I don’t mind when he does it with his own short-story collections. But here, it comes across like he doesn’t want the reader forgetting that it’s Harlan Ellison® putting all this together for you. Anyway, as a chronicle of how SF was evolving in the 60s, it’s worth checking out, but I can’t guarantee the gems outnumber the lemons.
The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne M. Valente
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I first tried Valente with her short-story/poetry collection The Melancholy of Mechagirl, which was a good intro to her work, so I was keen to try this novella which explores the “women in refrigerators” comic-book trope made famous by Gail Simone in which female comics characters are often abused and murdered simply as a plot device to provide the male superhero’s tragic backstory and give him motivation and purpose.
The book threads together six stories narrated by victims of that trope – girlfriends, wives and superheroes in their own right (or villain, in one case) who now all reside in Deadtown, a sort of purgatory city in the afterlife, and get together regularly as “The Hell Hath Club” to share their stories. For obvious reasons, Valente had to construct her own comic-book universe and pantheon of heroes in order to retell actual Marvel/DC storylines where female characters get killed off, and she does a great job at both. Indeed, half the fun (at least for comics fans) is figuring out which Marvel/DC character she’s really talking about.
I say “fun”, but it's a grim and righteously angry book that explores how male comics writers have traditionally treated women (whether by killing them, raping them or making them become porn stars either to demean them or make them sexier to the fanboys), and how those women would feel about all this in the afterlife. (Spoiler: not too happy.)
If there’s a flaw here, I’d say that mainly the characters all talk more or less in the same supercool, flip, snarky banter that does flow effortlessly off the page but also works against the idea that these are supposed to be monologues from six completely different people. But that’s a minor complaint – it’s short but powerful, and while you don't have to be a comics aficionado to enjoy this, I do think comics fans will get more out of it. In fact, I’d say it’s a must-read for anyone who loves comics.
Hellquad by Ron Goulart
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was my introduction to the works of Ron Goulart back when it first came out in 1984, at which time I was very much in the market for humorous SF/F (Hitchhiker’s Guide, Xanth, Robert Lynn Asprin’s Myth series, etc). Based on the jacket blurb, I assumed at the time he was well-known as an SF comedy writer, though as it turns out I have yet to meet anyone who has even heard of him, let alone read him. (Life lesson: book jacket blurbs are not to be trusted.) Anyway, I liked it enough then to pursue whatever of his books I could find in libraries and second-hand bookshops, and now we’ve come full circle with me re-reading this to see what grabbed me the first time.
This follows the usual Goulart template – mercenary hero (this time it’s John Wesley Sand of Soldiers of Fortune Inc, accompanied by weaponized snooty android butler Munson) is hired to take on a job (in this case, locate Julia Brandywine, the missing daughter of two executed spies who have been resurrected after their verdict was reversed) and meets a lot of weird, eccentric and gabby humans, catmen, lizardmen and rival mercenaries as he follows the lead provided in each scene. The Hellquad in question is a system of four planets generally agreed to be the worst planets in the galaxy, which is also where Julia was last seen alive.
I liked it in 1984, and I like it now, for more or less the same reason – it’s not so much the story (though this one is decent) as the strange characters, their speech mannerisms (“Zappo!” “Double rosco!” “Hoy!”) and the general cadence of Goulart’s writing style, which is so minimal he makes Elmore Leonard seem wordy, yet it generally works for me. This may not be his best book, and there may be better intros to his work than this, but clearly it was good enough to get me started. I have no regrets and the re-readings shall continue.
DID NOT FINISH
Wild Ducks Flying Backward by Tom Robbins
I've known about Robbins since the 80s, but never could bring myself to try one of his books – he was marketed in the 80s as a sort of hip new Vonnegut, or Hunter Thompson without the drugs, which I didn't quite trust (being a big fan of both Vonnegut and Thompson). I found this at a charity sale and thought that it might be a good way to try him out.
My instincts were right. Reading Robbins' prose feels like sitting in a bar listening to a slightly drunk smart guy monologuing for no reason other than that he loves to hear himself talk. Which is great for him, but it's not necessarily a good time for me. I won't rate it since I didn't get past the first couple of pieces, but my curiosity has been satisfied, and we shall not speak of this again.
View all my reviews
Duck and cover,
This is dF
Turn on the Heat by A.A. FairMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
When Erle Stanley Gardner wasn’t churning out Perry Mason mysteries, he was also writing lots of other books. Under the name A.A. Fair, he wrote 29 pulp mysteries featuring the team of private detectives Bertha Cool and Donald Lam, who ran against the archetype of hard-boiled detectives in that Cool was a middle-aged plus-size woman and Lam was a scrawny little guy who gets beat up a lot.
I tried Cool and Lam once before via another Hard Case Crime reprint, Top of The Heap, and it was okay enough that I picked up this one, which starts with a mysterious “Mr Smith” hiring the agency to locate a woman named Amelia Lintig – the wife of a Dr James Lintig – who disappeared 21 years ago following a small-town scandal involving her husband and his nurse. It doesn’t take long to work out that (1) Smith is really Dr Lintig, and (2) someone doesn’t want Lam poking around trying to find Mrs Lintig.
Things get increasingly complicated to the point that it’s gets difficult to work out who is doing what – especially with Lam trying to keep Cool and a few other characters from knowing what he’s really up to in order to give them plausible deniability. It’s not bad, necessarily – Gardner knows how to keep things moving along – but I can’t say I found the resolution all that satisfying, or at least the way Gardner builds up to it. And I don’t find Cool and/or Lam to be all that endearing as characters, either. Credit for doing something different, but I’m thinking I may stick with the Perry Mason books from here on in.
Help, I Am Being Held Prisoner by Donald E. WestlakeMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was recently reprinted by Hard Case Crime, which has been reprinting a lot of Westlake’s more obscure and/or out-of-print novels. In this one, Harry Künt is a compulsive practical joker who goes a step too far and ends up sentenced to two years in prison. By happenstance, he ends up as part of a group of criminals who have access to a secret tunnel that leads outside. But the object isn’t to escape – it’s to be able to go outside and live a normal life while they serve their time. Oh, and it’s also the perfect alibi for knocking over two banks in the town next to the prison.
It's a comedy. Much of the fun (and suspense) comes from the fact that Harry is not a career criminal and is terrified of being roped into an armed bank robbery, but he’s even more terrified of the tunnel gang bumping him off for knowing too much if he backs out. Meanwhile, the warden is on his case because some practical joker is planting notes around the prison with the same message – “Help I Am Being Held Prisoner” – and how many practical jokers could there be in the same prison?
The secret tunnel alone is a great premise, and Westlake has a lot of fun with it, especially as Harry tries to think up ways to prevent the robbery without the others catching on. Westlake keeps the pace moving along nicely for the most part. The ending is tied up a little too neatly, but overall it's an entertaining read. In fact, leave it to Westlake to write perhaps the most fun prison novel I’ve ever read.
Dangerous Visions by Harlan EllisonMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is probably one of the more famous short-story anthologies, partly because it was edited by Harlan Ellison (who accepted only new and unpublished stories for it, which in itself was unusual), and partly because it served as a demarcation from the Golden Age of classic science-fiction to the New Wave of SF, although many of the stories here aren’t really SF, but then that’s kind of the point – SF was transforming into something broader and more experimental.
One interesting thing about reading it now for the first time is how many of the authors here are SF staples today but were relatively unknown at the time or had yet to write their career-defining work – Norman Spinrad, Samuel Delaney, Larry Niven, Philip K Dick, Roger Zelazny, etc. As for the stories themselves … well, like any anthology, there’s something for everyone but not everything is going to work. And for the most part, the ones that worked for me were the ones by authors I’ve already read (Spinrad, Dick, Zelazny, Robert Bloch, Frederick Pohl, and of course Ellison, who also contributed a story as a callback/sequel to Bloch’s submission). The majority of the stories are at best average and in many cases, meh. On the bright side, the good stories are worth wading through everything else.
Ironically, the biggest weakness of the collection is Ellison himself, who clogs up the proceedings with long-winded intros that are as much about himself as the author or story he’s introducing. (Someone's probably already made the joke that the book would be half as long if you left out all the Ellison intros.) I realize it’s all part of the Ellison brand (it’s not lost on me that the book’s running head prints his name as Harlan Ellison®), and I don’t mind when he does it with his own short-story collections. But here, it comes across like he doesn’t want the reader forgetting that it’s Harlan Ellison® putting all this together for you. Anyway, as a chronicle of how SF was evolving in the 60s, it’s worth checking out, but I can’t guarantee the gems outnumber the lemons.
The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne M. ValenteMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I first tried Valente with her short-story/poetry collection The Melancholy of Mechagirl, which was a good intro to her work, so I was keen to try this novella which explores the “women in refrigerators” comic-book trope made famous by Gail Simone in which female comics characters are often abused and murdered simply as a plot device to provide the male superhero’s tragic backstory and give him motivation and purpose.
The book threads together six stories narrated by victims of that trope – girlfriends, wives and superheroes in their own right (or villain, in one case) who now all reside in Deadtown, a sort of purgatory city in the afterlife, and get together regularly as “The Hell Hath Club” to share their stories. For obvious reasons, Valente had to construct her own comic-book universe and pantheon of heroes in order to retell actual Marvel/DC storylines where female characters get killed off, and she does a great job at both. Indeed, half the fun (at least for comics fans) is figuring out which Marvel/DC character she’s really talking about.
I say “fun”, but it's a grim and righteously angry book that explores how male comics writers have traditionally treated women (whether by killing them, raping them or making them become porn stars either to demean them or make them sexier to the fanboys), and how those women would feel about all this in the afterlife. (Spoiler: not too happy.)
If there’s a flaw here, I’d say that mainly the characters all talk more or less in the same supercool, flip, snarky banter that does flow effortlessly off the page but also works against the idea that these are supposed to be monologues from six completely different people. But that’s a minor complaint – it’s short but powerful, and while you don't have to be a comics aficionado to enjoy this, I do think comics fans will get more out of it. In fact, I’d say it’s a must-read for anyone who loves comics.
Hellquad by Ron GoulartMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was my introduction to the works of Ron Goulart back when it first came out in 1984, at which time I was very much in the market for humorous SF/F (Hitchhiker’s Guide, Xanth, Robert Lynn Asprin’s Myth series, etc). Based on the jacket blurb, I assumed at the time he was well-known as an SF comedy writer, though as it turns out I have yet to meet anyone who has even heard of him, let alone read him. (Life lesson: book jacket blurbs are not to be trusted.) Anyway, I liked it enough then to pursue whatever of his books I could find in libraries and second-hand bookshops, and now we’ve come full circle with me re-reading this to see what grabbed me the first time.
This follows the usual Goulart template – mercenary hero (this time it’s John Wesley Sand of Soldiers of Fortune Inc, accompanied by weaponized snooty android butler Munson) is hired to take on a job (in this case, locate Julia Brandywine, the missing daughter of two executed spies who have been resurrected after their verdict was reversed) and meets a lot of weird, eccentric and gabby humans, catmen, lizardmen and rival mercenaries as he follows the lead provided in each scene. The Hellquad in question is a system of four planets generally agreed to be the worst planets in the galaxy, which is also where Julia was last seen alive.
I liked it in 1984, and I like it now, for more or less the same reason – it’s not so much the story (though this one is decent) as the strange characters, their speech mannerisms (“Zappo!” “Double rosco!” “Hoy!”) and the general cadence of Goulart’s writing style, which is so minimal he makes Elmore Leonard seem wordy, yet it generally works for me. This may not be his best book, and there may be better intros to his work than this, but clearly it was good enough to get me started. I have no regrets and the re-readings shall continue.
DID NOT FINISH
Wild Ducks Flying Backward by Tom RobbinsI've known about Robbins since the 80s, but never could bring myself to try one of his books – he was marketed in the 80s as a sort of hip new Vonnegut, or Hunter Thompson without the drugs, which I didn't quite trust (being a big fan of both Vonnegut and Thompson). I found this at a charity sale and thought that it might be a good way to try him out.
My instincts were right. Reading Robbins' prose feels like sitting in a bar listening to a slightly drunk smart guy monologuing for no reason other than that he loves to hear himself talk. Which is great for him, but it's not necessarily a good time for me. I won't rate it since I didn't get past the first couple of pieces, but my curiosity has been satisfied, and we shall not speak of this again.
View all my reviews
Duck and cover,
This is dF
