Necrophenia - Robert Rankin

2008; 393 pages. New Author? : No. Genre : Fiction; Humor. Overall Raitng : 8½*/10.

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Tyler and his high school chums want to be rock-&-roll stars. But they are penniless and are thus reduced to using school-owned ukuleles. The enigmatic Mr. Ishmael will supply them with proper instruments, but that comes at a price - a contract, signed in blood. Could Mr. Ishmael possibly have an ulterior motive? Ya think?

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What's To Like...

The storyline gallops along nicely. There are 75 chapters, which averages out to about 5 pages per chapter, and each one ends with a twist or a teaser.

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Style-wise, this reminds me of a cross between DiscWorld and HHGTTG. It is both witty and surreal. The fate of the world hangs in the balance and zombies walk the streets. A slew of luminaries make cameo appearances - Mama Cass, Aleister Crowley, the ultimate ukuleleist George Formby, and super-sleuth Lazlo Woodbine, just to name a few. The Rolling Stones and Elvis are also present, and in much more than cameos. There is "talking the toot", dialoguing with the Zeitgeist, and learning the real details about Elvis's death.

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Kewl New Words...

Fundament : the buttocks; the posterior (which makes a 'fundamentalist' a...). Pouffe : a thick cushion used as a seat. Debouched : something (usually water) flowing out from a narrow opening. Knees-Up : a party; a celebration (British). Remit (noun) : an area of authority or responsibility. Plimsoll : (British) a rubber-soled cloth shoe (similar to a sneaker).

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Excerpts...

"Taylor," he said to me as he ushered me into the visitors' chair, which stood, with three inches cut from its legs, before his desk.

"Tyler," I corrected him.

"Tyler," said the headmaster. "Yes, that's as good of an occupation as any for a lad such as yourself."

"My name is Tyler, sir," said I.

"Then how apt," said he. "And good luck with it, too." (pgs. 48-49)

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The snow dropped like dandruff from the Holy Head of God.

In my business, which is one of private detection, you see these cosmic similes all the time. You have to keep in touch with your spiritual side, never forgetting that every next step could be your last and a watched boil never pops. (pg. 192)

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"Just wait until I tell the guys at the tennis club."

"Tennis club?" I said. "You?"

"I'll have you know that I do own a tennis club," said Fangio.

"Own a tennis club?"

"Certainly. It's a thing about yay-long." Fangio mimed the yayness. "Made of wood, with criss-crossed strings at the fat end."

"That's a tennis racquet," I said.

"Not the way I use it," said Fangio. (pg. 237)

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You can't squeeze salt from a billiard ball, no matter how long you soak it. (pg. 196)

This is a typical Robert Rankin novel - fun to read, an event-filled, twisty storyline, and a bunch of likeable characters to hang out with. But Rankin's real forte has always been his witty writing.

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Necrophenia is both thought-provoking and tongue-in-cheek. If you like Douglas Adams, Tom Robbins, and Terry Pratchett, you will probably enjoy Robert Rankin as well. 8½ Stars.

The Charlemagne Pursuit - Steve Berry

2009; 540 pages. Book 4 of the Cotton Malone series. New Author? : No. Genre : Cri-Fi. Overall Rating : 10*/10.

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When Cotton Malone was 10, he was told by the Navy that his father passed away in a submarine disaster in the North Atlantic. Now, 38 years later, Cotton learns that the submarine (the "Blazek") was actually lost beneath the ice of Antarctica on a top secret mission, and that no search-&-rescue was ever launched for its crew.

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Which is puzzling enough. But what is really strange is that all sorts of people are trying to kill him now that he's learned this secret.

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What's To Like...

This is vintage Steve Berry. The action starts immediately and is non-stop. There are multiple plotlines and a well-researched and clearly-presented historical mystery ("The Charlemagne Pursuit") underpinning everything.

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The bad guys are not 2-D idiots, and at times it's hard to tell who's on whose side. And although this is part of a series, it is still a stand-alone book. Everything comes together nicely at the end, and I dare you to guess the outcome of the father/Blazek plotline.

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Kewl New Words...

Tympanum : the semi-circular or triangular decorative wall surface over an entrance (say, to a temple), bounded by a lintel and an arch. Wiki it. Pediment : the larger triangular section above a structure, typically supported by columns. It often contains a tympanum. Yeah, Wiki this too.

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Excerpts...

Interesting how danger stimulated desire. This man, a navy captain with good looks, modest brains, and a few guts, attracted her. Why were weak men so desirable? (pg. 103)

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Commander Zachary Alexander, retired USN, had spent the last thirty years doing nothing but complaining. His heart. Spleen. Liver. Bones. Not a body part had escaped scrutiny. Twelve years ago he became convinced he needed an appendectomy until a doctor reminded him that his appendix had been removed ten years before. (pg. 144)

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Bacchus tells me that they have communicated with many people and they respect all forms of language, finding each beautiful in its own way. The language of this gray land is a flowing tongue in an alphabet long ago perfected. On writing they are conflicted. It is necessary, but they warn that writing encourages forgetfulness and discourages memory and they are correct. (pgs. 407-08)

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No people live longer than the documentation of their culture. (pg. 140)

What does it take for a Cri-Fi novel to earn a ten-star rating?

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First, there must be no slow spots. The story must have lots of action, yet also be thought-provoking. It has to keep the reader up past his bedtime turning the pages. The historical hypothesis has to make sense, even if it strains at the bounds of believability. (After all, a dinosaur theme park on an island in the Pacific isn't very believable, is it?) The bad guys ought to be a bit "gray". Except for the UE (Ultimate Evil), but he must be resouceful.

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It helps if there are more than only two parties chasing after the Ultimate Artifact/Secret. There has to be a distinct ending, not just a teaser to the next sequel. All the plotlines have to be resolved, and there have to be twists along the way. Finally, the conclusion needs to be logical, yet unforeseen.

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So how does The Charlemagne Pursuit measure up to all this? 10 Stars.

Humpty Dumpty in Oakland - Philip K. Dick

1960 & 1986; 252 pages. Genre : Contemporary Fiction. New Author? : No. Overall Rating : 5*/10.

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On the advice of his doctor, Jim Fergesson is retiring and selling his one-man garage business. It will allow him and his wife to live the rest of their years modestly, but at least that's better than what his friend, Al Miller, will accomplish in life.

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Al Miller leases a plot of ground from Fergesson (adjacent to the garage), and is your classic, shifty, fast-talking used-car salesman. He knows he'll never get rich selling clunkers to patsies, but is happy that at least he understands this cold, cruel world better than his friend, Jim Fergesson. He just needs a break, and he's always on the look-out for it

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What's To Like...

Humpty Dumpty In Oakland examines the character of a number of people, although the spotlight is mostly on Jim and Al. Despite their different circumstances and occupations, their thought processes are remarkably similar. They may argue and get vexed with each other, but for some reason they keep visiting and chit-chatting.

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Philip K. Dick's desciptive passages are great; you can smell the grease and oil in Fergesson's garage, and feel the grittiness of the streets in this poorer part of Oakland.

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All the characters are interesting to get to know. HDIO has the style of Steinbeck's Cannery Row, although in tone it reminds me of Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman.

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Kewl New Words...

Jitney : a small bus that carries passengers over a regular route on a flexible schedule. (Think of today's "van service").

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Excerpts...

"They humiliated me," Al said.

"No that's all in your mind. You project your own motives onto the whole world; just because you're in the used-car business you see everyone in terms of used-car tricks." (pg. 166)

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"Luck is being able to make use of chance," Ross said. "It means that when something goes wrong you can turn it to your own advantage. It doesn't mean, say, always drawing a good hand. It doesn't mean getting three aces and two kings every time." Turning to face Al, he said, "It means that when you draw a nothing hand you can still win, because in some way that eludes the rest of us, you can make a nothing hand a winning hand." (pg. 173)

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"You just a humpty dumpty," Tootie said. "You just stand there, stand around, while it all happen to you. You just perch and watch." (pg. 247)

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"You have to do or you be done." (pg. 49)

Philp K. Dick wrote HDIO in 1960, but it wasn't published until 1986, after his posthumous rise to fame in the Horror genre. His talent shows through here, but you can also see why it went unpublished. Simply put, there's no action to sustain your interest. Miller and Fergesson are engaging souls, but they never do anything, and this isn't Existential Lit.

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So this is mostly for those PKD fans who are compelled to read everything he ever penned - even his early, straight dramatic stuff. For the rest of us, this is still an okay read, but non-essential. And you'll probably be happy that it's only 250 pages long. 5 Stars.

Get Real - Donald Westlake

2009; 289 pages. Genre : Crime Fiction; Humor. New Author? : No. Book #14 in the Dortmunder series. Overall Rating : 7*/10.

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What theme hasn't been tried yet as a Reality Show? How 'bout following John Dortmunder's gang of thieves as they plan and carry out their next heist? For Dortmunder and his cohorts, it's a chance to pick up some easy money as they do a scripted-for-TV caper. And maybe do a second, real job when the cameras aren't pointed their way.

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What's To Like...

Get Real is a formulaic Dortmunder tale, but that's okay. Our lovable lugs plan a caper that can't possibly go wrong, only to find it hitting snag after snag.

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The whole "how real is a Reality Show" issue is artfully done. Two new "partners" are written into the cast to add dramatic and romantic angles. And after initial discomfort, Dortmunder and friends find they kinda enjoy acting out their story in front of the cameras. Now if they can just steal something for real and get away with it.

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Kewl New Words...

Gaff : to rig or fix something in order to cheat (or in this case, to steal). Zeitung : German for 'newspaper', although its usage here was unclear.

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Excerpts...

Kelp stepped aside while the clerk was on the phone, to let the next customer, a short round Hispanic lady totally concentrated on her own business, wheel into place an enormous shopping cart piled sky-high with Barbies, all different Barbies. Either this lady had an awful lot of little nieces or she was some kind of fetishist; in either case, Kelp was happy to respect her privacy. (pg. 21)

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As Dortmunder nodded, the doorway filled with enough person to choke Jonah's whale. This creature, who was known only to those who felt safe in considering him their friend as Tiny, had the body of a top-of-the-line SUV, in jacket and pants of a neutral gray that made him look like an oncoming low, atop which was a head that didn't make you think of Easter Island so much as Halloween Island. (pg. 48)

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Reality is escapist entertainment at its most pure and mindless. (pg. 84)

Donald Westlake died unexpectedly in December 2008. Get Real was first published in July 2009. Sadly, it has the feel of a novel that was only about 90% finished at the time Westlake passed away. The story hums along nicely until we get to the matter of wrapping it up.

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Frankly, the ending is a major fizzle. All the major plotlines - the reality show, the second heist, and a tertiary auto-theft operation - are hastily and unsatisfactorily addressed. One gets the impression that a ghost-writer was called in at no notice, and did a crappy job of finishing the tale. 289 pages is a bit short for a Dortmunder book; added evidence that Westlake would've ended this properly, albeit using another 40 pages or so.

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Still, it was nice to see the whole gang in operation one last time, and Get Real was clipping along at an 8-star pace until that anti-climactic climax. We'll dock it a star for that, so 7 Stars it is.

The Silver Pigs - Lindsey Davis

1989; 329 pages. Book #1 in the "Falco" series. New Author? : Yes. Genre : At least three. Overall Rating : 5½*/10.

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Marcus Didius Falco is an informer (we'd call him a Private Investigator) in ancient Rome in 70 AD, who's always looking for a way to make some money. When he saves a damsel from a pair of thugs in the Forum, he escorts her home in the hope that protecting her is worth something.

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It is. She is in possession of a silver ingot (the "silver pigs") and knows where a lot more are. By Jove, it's an emperor's trove! Ah, but those silver pigs are hotter than Mt. Vesuvius, and there are lots of bad guys who'll stop at nothing to get their booty back. Including killing anyone who gets in their way.

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What's To Like...

The Silver Pigs is a Murder-Mystery. It's also Historical Fiction. It's also a Romance. It's all of the above. It's got wit and humor too, so one of these genres is bound to appeal to you. And if you like this first book, there are 19 more in the series.

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There are kewl settings here - Rome, Britain, and Gaul. I particularly liked the chapters that took place in ancient Britain. Lindsey Davis has an easy-reading style, which makes The Silver Pigs feel less like "work" than, say, an Edith Pargeter or Mary Renault opus.

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Kewl New Words...

Intaglio : a design or figure cut into stone or metal. Dozy : dopey; stupid (Britishism). Niffy : unpleasant-smelling (Britishism). Scrofulous : morally corrupt.

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Excerpts...

It was an ingot of lead. It weighed two hundred Roman pounds. I tried to explain once to a woman I knew, how heavy that was.

"Not a lot heavier than you. You're a tall girl, quite a solid piece. A bridegroom could just about heave you over his threshold and not lose his silly smile..." (pg. 49)

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Vespasian's banquets were extremely old-fashioned; the waitresses kept their clothes on and he never poisoned the food. (pg. 197)

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He had his eye on her laundry, that small but steady gold mine, but her own attention was riveted on his hefty real estate. Their lives together would be fortified by the keen nip of greed, as each prayed daily to their household gods that the other would die first.

Many marriages endure for decades on this healthy basis, so I wished her well. (pg. 258)

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Ave atque vale.

I found The Silver Pigs to be okay, but not great. The murder-mystery solution seemed arbitrary and incomplete. The historical-fiction angle was particularly unsatisfying to me - there were simply too many inaccuracies - measurements in inches; knights wandering around; and worst of all, the mention of the chemical compound carbonate of soda. It's hard to say if this was shallow research, or if it was intentionally "modernized". Hey, Shakespeare put anachronisms in his plays too.

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Then there's the romance. Simply put, there was too much of it to be in a book found in the mystery section of the bookstore. Lisa Jackson fooled me the same way years ago with Absolute Fear (see the review here), and I'll never pick up one of her books again.

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So if you're into historical-romance or mystery-romance, you'll probably enjoy this book. OTOH, if the "R-Word" sends you fleeing to another aisle in the bookstore, you might want to give this one a pass. We'll give it 5½ stars for the wit, the engaging characters, and the ambitious blending of genres. And we'll wonder whether the subsequent books have more or less icky romance in them.

Shades Of Grey - Jasper Fforde

2009; 388 pages. Full Title : Shades of Grey - The Road To High Saffron. New Author? : No. Genre : Contemporary Fiction. Overall Rating : 9*/10.

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Jasper Fforde ventures into dystopian fiction with Shades Of Grey. It is set at least a half-millenium in the future, after a catastrophic-but-undetailed "Something That Happened". We're presumably on earth; presumably near a coast in Great Britain.

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It is a world where people can only see one color, and even then only to varying degrees. No one can see at all in the dark. The story centers around Eddie Russett, who moves to East Carmine with his dad, who is going to be their Color Swatchman (a healer via colors). East Carmine is at the edge of the wilds, where the rigid rules of Society are occasionally bent just a wee bit.

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Eddie is betrothed to one Constance Oxford, who's definitely a step up for the Russett family lineage. He's happy with this lot until he meets Jane G-23, a lowly Grey, who's intriguing, rebellious, and therefore tantalizingly dangerous.

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What's To Like...

It's Jasper Fforde, so it's well-written and well-paced, and he's a master at detailing a vivid, strange land (even if it is monochromatic here), which makes it easy to become immersed in the storyline. Shades Of Grey is a page-turner, despite being just the first book of a new Fforde trilogy.

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Overall, it's the standard Dystopian Uber-Plot. The happy protagonist's eyes are opened, he starts to think, starts to question the Society, becomes a threat, and finds the Society taking appropriate steps against him. Some were disappointed that Fforde doesn't add anything new to the dystopian formula, but I don't think there's a lot of ways to vary it. What Fforde does do is present it in a new light - there's a subtle tongue-in-cheekiness tone that's not been done before in Dystopian Lit. And the idea of color-perception being the determinus of the societal caste system is kewl and innovative.

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Kewl New Words...

Retroussé : upturned at the end, as a nose. Mullioned : divided by horizontal bars, as a window. Spall : to break up into chips or fragments. Nobbled : disabled; hobbled (British). Farrago : a motley mess.

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Excerpts...

The Word of Munsell was the Rules, and the Rules were the Word of Munsell. They regulated everything we did, and had brought peace to the Collective for nearly four centuries. They were sometimes very odd indeed. The banning of the number that lay between 72 and 74 was a case in point, and no one had ever fully explained why it was forbidden to count sheep, make any new spoons or use acronyms. (pg. 29)

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"Do you want some advice? Go home. You're far too inquisitive, and here in East Carmine curiosity only ends one way."

"Death?"

"Worse - enlightenment." (pg. 110)

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"If you enjoyed laughing in the face of death, you might like to have a crack at High Saffron. One hundred merits, and all you have to do is take a look."

"I understand there's a one hundred percent fatality rate?"

"True. But up until the moment of death there was a one hundred percent survival rate. Really, I shouldn't let anything as meaningless as statistics put you off." (pg. 178)

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Curiosity is a descending stair

That leads only who-knows-where. (pg. 23)

The quibbles are minor. Shades Of Grey ends a bit abruptly, and the next installment isn't due out until 2014. That's a long time to be left hanging onto a cliff.

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The plusses overwhelm the minuses. Fforde's wit abounds, the storyline is engaging, and you'll love the world that he paints for you, its dystopian character notwithstanding. We can now chalk up another literary genre that Fforde shows himself to be a master of. 9 Stars.