SIMON GREEN – Hawk and Fisher. Ace, paperback original; 1st printing, September 1990. Reprinted in Swords of Haven: The Adventures of Hawk & Fisher, an omnibus edition containing the first three books in the series; see below. Penguin/Roc, July 1999; trade ppbk, June 2006.

   It is quite remarkable how you can come across the most interesting sorts of things when you least expect them. No one looking for the best locked room mystery written in 1990 (I wager to say) would ever in their right mind pick this book up to read — looking as it does as the latest variation of the Conan-based fantasy-action series that clog the science fiction shelves in every Waldenbooks store in the country.

   Hawk and Fisher (male and female, and married to each other) are two captains of the guard in the dark city of Haven, on some unknown world at some unknown time, where magic works, and vampires, werewolves and succubi abound. (He has a patch over one eye, and she wears a shirt that exposes an ample amount of bosom, as well illustrated on the front cover.)

   They are both tough, and even more remarkably, they are both honest, a rarity in Haven.

   After disposing of a particularly bothersome vampire, they are asked to investigate the stabbing of an important reformist councilor in his locked bedroom. The crime could not have been committed by a magical spell, as first suspected, as the dead man wore an amulet about his neck designed especially to ward off such attacks.

   Being a reformist in local politics means that the victim had many enemies, but the only ones who could have killed him are trapped in the house with him. Thus what this resembles, in perverse but strangely believable fashion, is an exceptionally good isolated county manor caper, complete with false trails, red herrings, and fine old-fashioned detective work.

   The solution to the crime, reasonably intricate, is meticulously worked out as well. I can’t see any flaws in the story, which certainly triggered all the right responses in me. I don’t know how easy it will be for you to get your hands on a copy, but since several more in the series have appeared in the meantime, it’s possible Ace may have kept them all in print. Highly recommended.

   And from later on, from the same issue of Mystery*File:

SIMON GREEN – Winner Takes All. Ace, paperback original; 1st printing, January 1991.

   The second in Green’s “Hawk & Fisher” series. The first, Hawk & Fisher, was an extremely pleasant surprise — a well-written locked room mystery taking place in a world of pure fantasy.

   This new adventure of the two married members of the Guards is pure politics, however, as election time is nearing. Lots of swords, lots of evil sorcery, lots of action. Entertaining, but still a disappointment in not living up to expectations.

       The Hawk & Fisher series:

Hawk & Fisher. Ace, September 1990.
Hawk & Fisher: Winner Takes All. Ace, January 1991.
Hawk & Fisher: The God Killer. Ace, June 1991.

Hawk & Fisher: Wolf in the Fold. Ace, September 1991
Hawk & Fisher: Guard Against Dishonor. Ace, December 1991.
Hawk & Fisher: The Bones of Haven. Ace, March 1992.

   The six books were reprinted in two omnibus editions. The first is so mentioned above. The second grouping of three titles was entitled Guards of Haven, Penguin/Roc, ppbk, November 1999; trade ppbk, June 2007.

Editorial Comments:   The artwork is so finely detailed it does not show up well in normal-sized images; hence the blow-up, as you see!

   Also, George Kelley has just reviewed the two omnibus editions of Hawk & Fisher books on his blog. You can read his comments by following this link.

ALISTAIR REYNOLDS – Century Rain. Ace, hardcover, June 2005; reprint paperback, May 2006. First published in the UK: Victor Gollancz, hardcover/softcover, 2004.

   The world Floyd and Custine live in seems to be Paris in the mid-nineteen fifties, but something is wrong, though they — and no one in their world knows it. They don’t know either that all that is about to change and Floyd, an expatriate American private detective/jazz musician is about to become a key figure in what happens.

   So is Verity Auger, an archeologist who specializes in excavating the ruins of Earth in the wake of the apocalyptic Nanocaust. A wormhole has been discovered, and at the end of it like Alice’s wonderland a surviving Earth preserved as if in amber — Floyd’s world, and somewhere on that alternate Earth is a device capable of destroying both realities — and a madman who plans to do just that.

   Over the last twenty years there has been a revolution is the hoary old science fiction genre of space opera in both the United States and in England.

   While popular, the American version tends to be militaristic and modeled on C. S. Forester’s Hornblower saga or Patrick O’Brien’s Aubrey and Maturin books, whereas the British revival is something else, with writers such as mainstream novelist Iain M. Banks, thriller writer Paul McAuley, and astrophysicist Alistair Reynolds taking the form places E. E. ‘Doc’ Smith and his Skylark and Lensman saga never imagined.

   Century Rain is a good example of the new space opera, a sweeping adventure novel dealing with vast ideas and concepts and at the same time a meditation in noir recreating a version of 20th Century Paris out of Simenon out of Raymond Chandler, with a human and moral private eye at the center of the action of both worlds and solving mysteries both personal and profound.

   Eventually Floyd and Auger will meet and team to save both their worlds, and part in a bittersweet moment.

   The ending as Floyd makes a painful decision about his own life and his own world is a Chandleresque moment of perfect pitch on Reynolds’ part.

   A world killer, some nasty monsters, galaxy spanning concepts of space and time, a heroine who is a cross between Indiana Jones and Flash Gordon, a noirish private eye with the soul of a jazz musician, a quest, an alternate Noirish Paris circa the 1950’s that would fit with one of Leo Malet’s Nestor Burma novels, hard science, alien artifacts, augmented humans, real humor, a touching love story, a sacrifice, an adventure, spy thriller, mystery … And yet the book is an homogeneous whole, as simple and perfect as any book you are likely to read, written with the casual elegance of a natural.

   And it all ends on a perfect note embracing both noirish despair and at the same time the hopeful optimism of the most boisterous space opera. This one is what they mean by a tour de force, a perfect blend of several genres that shouldn’t blend at all, but do here with real skill and to great effect.

JACK WILLIAMSON – The Legion of Time. Pyramid X-1586, reprint paperback, March 1967. Hardcover edition: Fantasy Press, 1952 (limited to 4604 copies).

   Actually two short novels published together as one book: “The Legion of Time” and “After World’s End”, each originally appearing in the pulp magazines in 1938.

   Both are slam-bang space opera at its finest, with groups of gallant men banding together to fight for the survival of (1) a far-future civilization, and (2) the human race itself. Names like Rogo Nug, Kel Aran, Verel Erin and Zerek Oom prevail.

   The first is the better story, but I soon found myself caught up in the second one as well — obviously a distant forerunner of Star Wars.

COMMENT: Of the four names above, one is that of a starship’s captain, two are members of his crew, and the fourth is that of the girl he seeking, perhaps the last other survivor of the human race. Can you tell which is which?

JOHN BRUNNER – Into the Slave Nebula. Lancer 73-797, paperback; 1st printing, this edition, 1968. Revised from the novel Slavers of Space, Ace Double D-421, pb original, 1960 (bound with Dr. Futurity, by Philip K. Dick).

   The young scion of a wealthy family on Earth stumbles across the murder of a “Citizen of the Galaxy,” and faced with a boring future otherwise, decides to investigate, not realizing how deep into space the conspiracy lies.

   Unfortunately, anybody who reads the title before opening the book knows exactly what’s going on. And even so, it’s only an adventure novel, poorly told. I’d suggest another revision, if I thought it would do any good.

COMMENT: This is the first time I have ever used the word “scion” in a sentence. Do you know what? It feels just fine.

E. HOFFMAN PRICE – Operation Longlife. Ballantine/Del Rey, paperback original, January 1983.

   The story of an 186-year-old scientist named Avery Jarvis “Doc” Brandon. This was written by an 84-year-old pulp writer, and — with all due respect — it reads like it.

AVRAM DAVIDSON – Masters of the Maze. Pyramid R-1208, paperback original; July 1965.

   It sounds like space opera — the monstrous Chultex swarming across the galaxy to ravage Earth! — but as usual, Davidson’s flair for dense literary science fiction is beyond me. I’ve been able to read Davidson’s short stories, on occasion, but never one of his novels. In his case, and given his reputation, I’m perfectly willing to say it’s me.

[UPDATE] 05-04-10. Back in the late 1950s through the 1960s, I used to gobble up space opera SF novels as if they were snacks just out of the pack. By the early 90s, as you can see, it was getting more and more difficult for the same old fare to satisfy me. For the most part now, I don’t read much SF, although I try every once in a while, and when I do, guess what? It’s almost always space opera. No new tricks for me, or at least not very often.

THE NIGHTMARE MAN. BBC-TV, UK, four-part mini-series, 01 May to 22 May 1981. James Warwick, Celia Imrie, Maurice Roëves, Tom Watson, Jonathan Newth, James Cosmo. Screenplay: Robert Holmes, based on the novel Child of the Vodyanoi by David Wiltshire. Director: Douglas Camfield.

   That both the screenwriter and the director were involved with the BBC’s Dr. Who, both before and after, suggests why this moderately well-plotted SF-thriller comes off so well.

   All four parts take place on a unnamed Hebrides island, up around Scotland way. About 35 square miles in size, the island has a police force of four men, headed by Inspector Inskip (Maurice Roëves), and a coast guard station with three more.

   Is that enough to protect the island’s inhabitants from a crazed killer whose victims have been mauled to death by a creature that seems to be half animal and half human? Under ordinary circumstances, yes, but the island is socked in by fog with no access to the mainland. Until the weather clears, the people on the island are strictly on their own.

   Pictured on the DVD cover are the two principal characters in this four-act play. James Warwick as Michael Gaffikin, the island’s dentist, an outsider who honorable intentions are questioned by the closely-knit townspeople in regard to the incipient love affair between him and the island’s druggist, Fiona Patterson, played the lovely Celia Imrie.

   Only once do we see the latter in anything resembling glamorous, however, during a dinner date with Gaffikin, in which she wears a daring low-cut dress. Otherwise she is as bundled up against the fog as the rest of the guys. Of course it is she who has previously mapped out the island, so it is also she who is their guide up and down and across some fairly rugged terrain (actually filmed in Cornwall), trying to reach campers in danger and to track the increasingly murderous intruder — who just may be an alien newly arrived from space.

   As usual in stories like these, the truth, while equally fantastic is also rather prosaic, making the fourth of the four episodes the weakest. It takes a lot of sedentary (standing around) exposition to make the details of the island’s attacker understood.

   But before then, by which I mean the previous three episodes, this is a fine example of horror fiction, slightly old-fashioned now and only moderately gory, one supposes, due to its being made for TV — shown only once, by the way, until recently released by the BBC on Regions 2 and 4 DVD.

   I watched all four episodes (two hours) in one evening. I couldn’t stop myself.

ROBERT MOORE WILLIAMS – The Darkness Before Tomorrow. Ace Double F-141, paperback original; 1st printing, 1962. [Paired with this novel, tête-bêche, is The Ladder in the Sky, by Keith Woodcott (aka John Brunner).]

   Dan Stumpf and David Vineyard were briefly exchanging comments about “hack” writers earlier this month. It all depends on one’s definition, of course, and while you can say that a hack writer is one without talent and/or one who merely cranks out the wordage for the money, everyone has a different concept of what’s talent and what’s not and/or how many cranks are needed to make a hack.

   When it comes to Science Fiction hacks, though, for some reason Robert Moore Williams comes to mind. Not that I’ve read anything by him in nearly 50 years, but I’m sure I have, and it must have stuck with me, since (rightly or wrongly, but with no malice intended) I’ve tended to use his fiction as more or less my yardstick of hackwork.

   Titles such as Conquest of the Space Sea (1955) and Zanthar of the Many Worlds (1967) might suffice as examples, but in all honestly, since I haven’t read them, I can hardly dwell on them.

   I will point out that Robert Moore Williams’ SF career started considerably earlier than did, say, John Brunner’s, whose novel on the other side of this Ace Double I reviewed here not so long ago. Brunner first novel was published in 1951, I believe, but it wasn’t until the late 1950s that anyone began to take notice of him.

   In comparison, Williams’ first story appeared in Astounding SF in 1937, and he had a long list of other pulp stories to his credit before he turned to paperback fiction in the 1950s. But no matter; even in 1962 his pulp roots show. The Darkness Before Tomorrow has, I am sorry to say, very little in it for which I might recommend it to you.

   The opening couple of chapters are adequate, however, and indeed maybe even more than adequate. The story begins in the year 1980 or so, with the action going on immediately, allowing the characters to be introduced on the fly.

   Someone, as it happens, has discovered a new kind of weapon that kills without making a wound of any kind. Scientist George Gillian stumbles across a body killed in such a way and hence into a crossfire between the villains and the pair who are resisting them, a brother and sister (Eck and Sis) whose side Gillian quickly joins.

   If I were to tell you that the head villain is a ruthless gangster named Ape Abrussi, and his headquarters are in what’s called Mad Mountain, you will know at once what kind of story this is. It is also the story of aliens walking among us (with small horns on the foreheads and goat-like eyes), with only good intentions (it is assumed), and no, Ape is not one of them. It turns out that he came across his new weapon only by accident, and now that he has, his intentions are to rule the world.

   In a novel like this, of course, good luck with that.

   And so, the big question is: Is this the work of a hack? “Hackery” is such a pejorative term I’d hate to say yes, but I have a feeling that by many people’s standards, the answer is is probably in the affirmative. Williams is good in describing places and things, conjuring up loads of atmosphere for the former and having an excellent eye for detail on the latter.

   But what he’s not so good at are essential things, such as working with people and complex relationships between them — nor is the dialogue they speak anything but stiff. Williams is not so good at science, either, but he’s good at waving his hands and making believe that he does.

   But you could say pretty much the same sort of things about 90% of the writers who wrote for the pulps. What most of them could do, though, those who were successful at it — and I’d place Robert Moore Williams among them — was to write stories that made readers keep on reading them. It worked for me!

KEITH WOODCOTT – The Ladder in the Sky. Ace Double F-141, paperback original; 1st printing, 1962. [Paired with this novel, tête-bêche, is The Darkness Before Tomorrow, by Robert Moore Williams.]

   There was a time when every SF fan worthy of the title had to have a complete set of Astounding’s, and if not, then a set of Ace SF Doubles was almost as good a credential for getting yourself in the door.

   For the most part they were a direct carry over from the days of the pulp magazines, but gradually better authors and better writing came along – authors such as Samuel R. Delany and Ursula K. LeGuin – but even so, their early stories still showed their pulp roots.

   And so does The Ladder in the Sky. Woodcott was one of the pen names of the much better known John Brunner, an author who went on to win a Hugo award or two – but not in 1962, nor for this book, as enjoyable as I found it to be.

   The Ladder in the Sky one of those books that heads off in one direction, a totally familiar one for veteran SF-nal readers, but somewhere along the way, it jumps off the track and all but starts over. (I love it when that happens. Or at least I usually do.)

   Picked seemingly at random from literally a slum on the wrong side of tracks on a backwater planet, Kazan is kidnapped and forced by a sorcerer into a mystical if not magical sort of servitude to a black demon or devil for the standard year and a day. (See the cover as shown above.)

   The purpose? To gain the powers he needs to rescue the city’s true leader from his imprisonment in an impregnable fortress surrounded by a moat filled with strange and ferocious creatures.

   Easily done. And then? The rest of the tale. (See above.) Kazan has to learn what his powers are, what they can be used for – and what they can’t – and most importantly, how to get along with his fellow humans while he’s struggling with his own identity.

   These, I am sure, are concepts that resonated strongly with the SF readers of the day. The writing is acceptable, but unfortunately some of the characters are only caricatures of real people. Primitive, in fact. It may have been lack of space – the novel is only 137 pages long – or (more likely) this early in Brunner’s career he had the ideas but not yet the skills to carry them out.

   If you want a really scary story or two… or more… you have to go to the masters, the inspired hacks who made a living off cheap thrills. Fredric Brown’s short-short stories (some only a page or two) collected in Honeymoon in Hell and Nightmares and Geezenstacks (Bantam, 1958 and 1961, respectively) aren’t all that great taken individually — though some are quite nice indeed.

   Brown can find pathos in a dinosaur and horror in three feet of water — but read as a whole, they have an effect like the Rubaiyat, sort of an extended meditation on fates already writ, that set me to thinking of things unhallowed.

   So I picked up Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper (Belmont, 1962) a collection of the best of Robert Bloch’s stories from Weird Tales. I hadn’t read these since grade school, when they kept me up all night, and I have to say they still pack a creepy punch.

   In the wisdom of my advancing years, I was able to sit back and admire the way Bloch — a lean and hungry writer in those days –could shift voices, writing sometimes in victorian academic, sometimes in modern hard-boiled or omniscient 3rd person … whatever it took to hone the story at hand to a sharp, unsettling edge.

   Besides the title tale, there are such classics here as “The House of the Hatchet,” “Beetles,” and “The Faceless God,” all guaranteed to keep you up at night.

● MURRAY LEINSTER – The Monster from Earth’s End. Gold Medal s832, paperback original; 1st printing, January 1959.

● THE NAVY VS. THE NIGHT MONSTERS. Realart Pictures, 1966. Mamie Van Doren, Anthony Eisley, Billy Gray, Bobby Van, Pamela Mason. Director: Michael A. Hoey.

   Interestingly, a couple decades after “Who Goes There?” John W. Campbell’s story which was the basis for The Thing from Another World (reviewed here ), Murray Leinster visited that neck of the woods for The Monster from Earth’s End, which is a splendid book despite a cover that looks like a naked blonde in the clutches of a giant booger.

   It’s set on a remote Antarctic island serving as a way station for people and things going to and from the South Pole, and Leinster starts off splendidly, with the creepy arrival on the island of a plane carrying a mysterious cargo; most of the crew has vanished, and the pilot kills himself on landing.

   From here on the tension never lets up, as Leinster takes up the mood Campbell established in his tale and sustains it for nearly two hundred pages of solid chills. I particularly like the way he draws his characters as individuals — like those in the Howard Hawks film — and lets them carry as much of the story as the monsters do. And trust me, these are some very creepy monsters indeed.

   The Monster from Earth’s End was filmed (rare for a paperback original) as The Navy vs. the Night Monsters in 1966 by Michael Hoey, son of the fondly-remembered Dennis Hoey and a busy movie-maker in his own right, though never a very distinguished one: he worked on a few Elvis Presley movies and a lot of Television and that’s about it. Navy may mark some notable point in his career, high or low, depending on your tolerance for schlock.

   As such, it’s … well … let’s be charitable and say it’s not completely successful. There’s some lurid photography by Stanley Cortez (Night of the Hunter), some of the characters are a bit deeper than usual, and there was obviously an attempt to re-capture the ambiance of Hawk’s The Thing, with spots of banter and sexual repartee among the principals (Mamie Van Doren, Anthony Eisley, Bobby Van…)

   Unfortunately, it all falls terribly flat in Hoey’s oven-mitts. Where The Thing benefited from Hawks’ overlapping dialogue and relaxed mise-en-scene, the characters in Navy/Monsters look like they were stood up in front of a camera handed their lines and that’s it. The comedy relief is very clearly labeled: “Comedy Relief” with posed pratfalls; love scenes are marked: “Love Scene” with syrupy underscoring, and the scary bits…

    …well, there’s another problem. Where Leinster could toss off a line like “Half the plane now was filled with monstrous, moving, incredible horrors,” and let the reader’s imagination do his work, and where Hawks tingled our spines with brief glimpses of some big nasty-looking Thing, Hoey has to trot out a few silly-looking rubber monsters and let them flop their limp tentacles about rather aimlessly while the actors try to look scared.

   It’s all a bit disappointing, and the resolution comes off as particularly lame, as if at some point they decided to just end the damn thing. Too bad they didn’t do it 90 minutes sooner.

   Part 1 of this series: RANDALL GARRETT – Lord Darcy Investigates.

2.)   JAMES HERBERT – The Jonah. Signet, paperback original; 1st printing, 1981. UK edition: New English Library, pbo, 1981.

   James Herbert has established himself as one of the leading British horror novelists with chillers like The Rats, The Fog, Survivor, Fluke, Lair, The Spear, and The Dark.

   His latest novel, The Jonah, features undercover policeman Jim Kelso as a jinxed man, a jonah no one will work with. Through a series of flashbacks, Herbert shows Kelso’s early life in England — his abandonment at birth, the horror of the orphanage in post-WW II Britain.

   Even then, death struck those around Kelso — when bullies chase him into an abandoned house, a savage death befalls them. Later, Kelso finds his step-father mysteriously dead, and a few years after that the woman he lives with dies in horrible circumstances.

   When Kelso begins his career with the police, misfortune seems to strike those colleagues who work with him. Eventually, because no one will work with him, Kelso is assigned to undercover assignments where he can work alone. Even so, whenever a big bust comes down, the police involved with Kelso are killed or injured.

   As a last resort, Kelso is teamed with a woman undercover agent, Ellie Shepherd. Together, they are supposed to break up a drug ring operating around a NATO base where a pilot recently crashed into the sea while taking drugs on a mission.

   Kelso stubbornly resists a romantic involvement with Ellie and tries to discourage her from working with him on the assignment before his jinx strikes her. Although one of the pushers is murdered and an attempt is made on their lives, Kelso and Ellie get closer and closer to the secret of the drug ring.

   There’s a solid presentation of police procedure in all of this, but all the while Herbert also generates a mood of rising terror through the use of his flashbacks.

   The final climactic scene is chilling but lacks the impact of Herbert’s classics, The Spear and The Dark. Nevertheless, for a few hours of suspenseful reading, The Jonah will do.

    Mixing genres is a risky enterprise, and the works I’ll be reviewing in this series blend mystery and science fiction/fantasy with mixed results.

1.)   RANDALL GARRETT – Lord Darcy Investigates.

Ace, paperback original; 1st printing, September 1981.

   Randall Garrett has been writing about Lord Darcy, Chief Investigator for the Duke of Normandy, since 1964. Lord Darcy investigates impossible crimes but the twist is the setting of the stories: an alternate world where magic works while science is looked upon with suspicion.

   The “magic” is actually psi powers developed by the Laws of Magic. The semi-medieval, twentieth-century civilization Garrett develops is convincing both for the primitive science the aristocratic society scorns and for the sophisticated magic most characters possess.

   The interesting point here is that Lord Darcy possesses no psi powers — for that he relies on his sorcerous assistant, Sean O’Lochlainn. Instead, Lord Darcy uses induction and deduction to pull off amazing Sherlockian solutions to the incredible puzzles Garrett presents him with.

   Lord Darcy Investigates is a collection of four novelettes: “A Matter of Gravity,” “The Ipswich Phial,” “The Sixteen Keys,” and “The Napoli Express.”

   In “A Matter of Gravity,” Lord Darcy solves a locked-room murder with a double twist ending. In “The Ipswich Phial,” Lord Darcy becomes involved in an espionage mission featuring a beautiful Polish spy, a murdered British agent, and a missing secret weapon. This is the best story in the volume.

    “The Sixteen Keys” presents the puzzle of a dead man in a house with sixteen locked doors. And “The Napoli Express” has more deception than Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express.

   I highly recommend Lord Darcy Investigates and the other Lord Darcy volumes, Too Many Magicians (Doubleday, 1967; Ace 1981), a novel, and Murder and Magic (Ace, 1979, 1981), a collection of four more novelettes.

      The Lord Darcy series —

* Randall Garrett:

     Too Many Magicians (n.) Doubleday, hc, 1967.
     Murder and Magic (co) Ace, pbo, 1979.

     Lord Darcy Investigates (co) Ace, pbo, 1981.
     Lord Darcy (co) SFBC, 1983. [A omnibus edition containing all of the above plus additional short stories.]

* Michael J. Kurland:

     Ten Little Wizards (n.) Ace, pbo, 1988.

     A Study in Sorcery (n.) Ace, pbo, 1989.