Mon 1 Oct 2018
Mystery Review: ROBERT SHECKLEY – Live Gold.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[11] Comments
ROBERT SHECKLEY – Live Gold. Stephen Dain #3. Bantam J2401, paperback; 1st printing, July 1962.
I’m not sure, but Live Gold may be unique in the annals of detective fiction. We know the villain from very early on. In fact over 90 percent of the story follows along with him on his latest arduous journey across northern Africa, circa 1951-52, with a contingent of perhaps 400 very indigent Muslims on their once in a lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca.
Or so they believe. What they do not know is that their guide, Mustapha ibn Harith, is leading them instead straight into slavery. Live gold.
What we the reader do not know is which one the seven Europeans traveling with them is the international agent Stephen Dain. Each and every one might be the man, but neither Harith nor his sycophant assistant, a Greek named Prokopulous, can determine which one he is — and their attempts to do so form the thrust of the story.
Robert Sheckley was, of course, far better known for his long career of writing witty and often outright comic science fiction, usually in the short story form. The wit is often present in this, Dain’s third recorded adventure. I don’t think Sheckley could have stopped himself if he had tried. It’s subtle, though, and a reader unfamiliar with his style of writing may not even notice.
What I found amusing personally, for example, was Sheckley’s apparent fondness for place name dropping, a trend that takes place every so often throughout the book. Take this passage from page 109:
After a while one begins to wonder if Sheckley had ever been near any of these places. The alternative, of course, is that he had a really good atlas at his disposal.
The Stephen Dain series —
Calibre .50 (1961)
Dead Run (1961)
Live Gold (1962)
White Death (1963)
Time Limit (1967)
October 1st, 2018 at 6:42 pm
Seeing as he was competing with Fleming and the likes of Hammond Innes place name dropping in an international thriller is par for the course, though in places he might have done it a bit less like reciting a travel brochure or a travelogue.
I like the Dain thrillers, and this one with it’s odd structure, though they are minor Sheckley and fairly unimportant as the genre goes. I would say this was for Sheckley fans only or completists.
Sheckley did much better with his send up of the genre THE GAME OF X which became the basis of the disappointing Disney film CONDORMAN and with the series based on his short story “The 7th Victim” filmed and novelized as THE 10th VICTIM which inspired a series of prequels later in Sheckley’s career that were as much thrillers as science fiction.
DEAD RUN was made into a minor but not bad film with Peter Lawford as Dain, like this one that book focuses a good deal on the man Dain is pursuing and less on Dain.
All this aside Sheckley was often better in short form than long, one of the reasons he penned some of the better stories for the original TWILIGHT ZONE.
October 1st, 2018 at 8:57 pm
Strange structure or not, I enjoyed this one enough that I’ll make a point of reading the others when they come along. Some of the pleasure, though, I have to admit, is due to the fact that I’ve been reading Sheckley’s science fiction short stories recently, and it was fun to see what he could do with the spy thriller genre.
Turn it upside down is all he did!
October 2nd, 2018 at 1:59 pm
I read these Robert Sheckley thrillers back in the Sixties. However, I prefer Sheckley’s SF. He’s one of the few SF writers to inject humor into his stories successfully.
October 2nd, 2018 at 2:01 pm
I also enjoyed Sheckley’s THE GAME OF X which is both clever and funny.
October 2nd, 2018 at 3:39 pm
That’s one of Sheckley’s I haven’t read. I’ll have to look for my copy of it.
October 3rd, 2018 at 5:53 pm
Don D’Ammassa has an article on Sheckley’s works, including the thrillers:
http://dondammassa.com/zshec.htm
October 3rd, 2018 at 10:36 pm
Wow. Thanks, Bill. If anyone would like to know something about anything Sheckley wrote, this is the site to go to.
I’ve never read a lot of fantasy, so I wasn’t surprised to see that there’s quite a lot of his work in that field that I was unaware of, but I was a little taken back to discover how much of his SF that I’ve managed to miss. Too many books!
October 5th, 2018 at 12:02 pm
Also, Sheckley was one of the compulsive travelers among the writers of his generation…if he didn’t simply flip through a gazetteer, which he well have, he might also have been consulting his notes…and writing of the trip as research?
October 7th, 2018 at 8:14 pm
WHITE DEATH is entertaining as well. That’s the only one of Sheckley’s Dain novels I’ve read. And I picked it up because of his SF stories.
October 8th, 2018 at 3:13 am
I have a whole set now of books to read — or would like to. I enjoyed this one.
October 8th, 2018 at 10:54 pm
Sheckley seemed unwilling to take genre conventions with complete seriousness. I found that to be one of his most enjoyable literary traits.
Glad you liked this book, Steve.