Books: Battlestar Galactica: Armageddon By Richard Hatch and Christopher Golden (1997)

“The commander of the Galactica after the death of his father, Adama, Apollo is forced to battle charges of treason, while struggling to defeat the deadly Cylons and their ally, Count Iblis, and investigating rumors that his friend, Starbuck, missing after a Cylon raid, is alive.”

There were several attempts to revive Battlestar Galactica after its cancellation in 1979, with Bryan Singer, Tom DeSanto and eventually series star Richard Hatch all making some effort. Most of the ideas were going to be a continuation from the last episode, The Hand of God, and would ignore the events of the misbegotten spin-off Galactica 1980 (now rebranded as season two of the original series). Berkley Books, for their part, continued to adapt popular episodes into novels well into the 1980s. They also released four original novels before bringing the publishing line to an end.

It’s well known that before ABC settled on what the failed spin-off became, most of the principle cast was asked back (Terry Carter’s Colonel Tigh, Noah Hathaway’s Boxey, Maren Jensen’s Athena, and Laurette Spang’s Cassiopeia would be written out to save money). But Hatch grew concerned with the direction and felt the spin-off had altered his character too much. Thus he declined. But in the 1990s, as he continued to appear at conventions, Hatch was reconsidering the role of Apollo and set out to convince Universal Studios –the rights holders for the franchise- to bring back the series by co-directing and executive-produced a trailer called Battlestar Galactica: The Second Coming (which can be found on Youtube). Hatch's idea would have be a direct continuation of the original 1978 series, and featured original actors John Colicos (Baltar),Terry Carter (Colonel Tigh), Richard Lynch, and Jack Stauffer (Bojay). Though the trailer won acclaim at science-fiction conventions, Universal was not interested in Hatch's vision for the revival and instead opted for a remake that launched in 2004. Even though he was disappointed and angry, he began to write (with various authors) novels based on his idea for that revival.

The first of these books is Battlestar Galactica: Armageddon and is set 18 years after the events of last episode aired in 1979. It opens with what was a staple of the series, a “crash of the week” plot where both Apollo and Starbuck are on a recon patrol. They’ve encountered the Cylons again after years and years of no contact with them.  But Starbuck’s viper is damaged and crash lands on a planet swarming with Cylons. Apollo leaves him behind to warn the fleet, but by the time he arrives, his father, Commander Adama has died. And all hell breaks loose within the rag-tag fleet. But like his father, Apollo follows a vision that tells him about Adama’s faith and that Starbuck is still alive and needs his help.

This novel also continues the Mormon themes that series creator Glen A. Larson introduced in the original series, such as marriage for "time and eternity", the “council of twelve" and the “lost thirteenth tribe of humans, and a planet called Kobol.” But it adds much more violence and sees the fleet falling apart after Adama’s death, as those citizens don’t seem to have any faith in Apollo as their commander. I found this an interesting change and something I'm sure never would've been done had the series continued on TV. It reintroduces Count Iblis, the “demon” the crew encountered in two-part episode War of the Gods (and Iblis promised they would see him again). It also details the origins of the Cylons and sees them creating Cylon/Human hybrids.

While Apollo is not the big hero as he was portrayed in the series, he still is too much a boy scout for my liking. Still, Hatch and Golden do capture much of roguishness of Starbuck, but the rest of the writing is a bit dry and never achieves what writer Robert Thurston did back in the 1970s and 80s (he adapted four episodes of the series and penned four original novels). It was nice, however, to see the women in the Galactica universe having something to do other than play worried sister, lover, or friend. Both Athena and Cassiopeia get strong arcs here (though I wonder what happened to Dr. Salik, as Cassiopeia is still a Medtech in this series) and we are introduced to new character like Dalton, the daughter of Starbuck and Cassiopeia. Boxey is still here, but is now about 24 and goes by the name of Troy (the one hold over kept from Galactica 1980).

Seven books were released between 1997 and 2005.

Books: Bad News By Donald E. Westlake (2001)

"When a little solo heist for a measly thousand bucks' worth of cameras goes belly up, Dortmunder, just trying to make ends meet (oddly, there is no explanation as to where all the thousands of dollars he made off of Max Fairbanks from What’s the Worst that Could Happen? has absconded to), joins Andy Kelp in switching coffins in the dead of night in a Queens cemetery for reasons Fitzroy Guilderpost and his co-conspirators Irwin Gabel and Little Feather Redcorn decline to elaborate on—until Dortmunder confiscates their guns and genially insists. The scam? To prove via DNA typing that Vegas showgirl Little Feather is the last surviving member of the Pottaknobbee tribe, hence entitled to a third of the proceeds of the Silver Chasm Gambling Casino, jointly run by the Oshkawas and the Kiotas. The two casino managers, blithely engaged in skimming millions from their fellow tribe members, dislike this idea so heartily that they counter it with a second grave robbery that's foiled by a tombstone switch engineered by Dortmunder but complicated by 24/7 cemetery surveillance, necessitating still another robbery, this one at a historic mansion on the Delaware Water Gap."

First, out of the gate, Bad News is a pretty funny book, especially the opening bit with John talking his way out of a failed robbery (which would have made a great short story in it of itself). I would argue the first quarter of the book is laugh out loud funny, as well (Thanksgiving dinner was a hoot). But why was it a John Dortmunder novel? At best, he and his team are peripheral to the story, as they become involved in an already hatched caper involving a former Las Vegas showgirl and blackjack dealer, Little Feather Redcorn, Fitzroy Guilderpost and Irwin Gabel as they try to scam some unscrupulous Native American owners of a casino in upstate New York. A good portion of the book deals with these three, with John, Tiny, and Andy sort of helping out after the fact. Even Dortmunder, at one point, wonders why he is there. 

But it was five years after the last book, so maybe Westlake (who a few years earlier had also finally returned to his Parker universe after a twenty-year hiatus) felt the need to release a tenth Dortmunder title and he shoehorned him into this already clever –if not original- tale. Writers -often prolific ones like Westlake- will tell you they have many ideas, write many pages of something and then run into a roadblock and then shelve it until they can figure out which way to go. Perhaps this is what happened with Bad News -or he found an affinity for the other characters like Little Feather so he wrote more about her. Still. the false heir idea is well played here, and Little Feather is tough, but still likeable. But as I approach the final four books in the series, I hope this theme of John and his gang coming late to the party does not become permanent trope. 

Books: One of Us Is Wrong By Samuel Holt (1986/2006)

"Actor Sam Holt has packed in Packard, the TV detective he played for several years to much acclaim and money. But success has had its downside: Holt comes to recognize the stigma all actors can attest to after a long run as one character; he is so closely identified with Packard that he pretty much finds himself incapable of getting any work. Suddenly, though, someone seems to have a new part for Holt: the role of Dead Body. Years of having watched stuntdrivers do their stuff help Holt avoid becoming a greasespot on the San Diego Freeway, but his Volvo will never play the violin..."

The shelves of the mystery genre are filled with average, ordinary people who decide to match wits with murderers. Some are housewives; some are bakers, gardeners, old ladies (or old men) who discover in their latter days they’re still useful as amateur detectives. Then we have run-of-the-mill kids’ everyday matching intellects with diabolical killers, as well. The Sam Holt series does fall into this category, as he’s successful actor who becomes a private detective, but as it’s been pointed out “these books were first published in the late 1980s” which “suggest that Samuel Holt was treading relatively new ground at the time rather than following the path of an exhausted trope.” 

As Donald E. Westlake explains in his forward, the reason he created Sam Holt was out of the idea that after being a successful writer for decades, could he do it today, could he succeed or fail as a brand new, untested author (which was hard then, harder today)? He is not the first author to do this (even though he wrote many books under different names, as well), and he highlighted Stephen King as a sort of inspiration, who wrote a handful of novels as Richard Bachman between 1977 and 1982. So he talked to his agent and together, they thought this would be a good idea. “We found a publisher who agreed to keep the secret in return for a shorter-than-normal advance for a four-book contract, and Samuel Holt was born,” he wrote.

Using John D. MacDonald as reference, Westlake said “when he started Travis McGee,” he “wrote the first three books simultaneously, because it was his first attempt at a series character and he wanted to be sure the voice was consistent.” Westlake did the same thing with his Holt tales, and happy with the outcome, outlined three more titles. However, it was not to be, as when the first book was released in 1986, signs in the local bookstores noted that Samuel Holt was actually Donald E. Westlake (the publisher had told his sales staff this and instructed them to pass this information onto the bookstores). With the pen named spoiled, Westlake reluctantly fulfilled his four-book contract and shelved books five and six (who were still only in outlined versions). They eventually went out-of- print but were finally reissued in 2006 by Felony & Mayhem, a New York based publisher of out-of-print classic mysteries. 

One of Us is Wrong is a cleverly constructed novel that does not go where I thought it would, but all the characters are likable. Holt is like 34-35 here, but Westlake writes him –at times- like he’s much older. The garish reissue covers (can't find images of the original covers) paint him in that classic 1970s look with feathered hair and mustache –looking like he stepped out of porn shoot more than a TV series (think David Soul from Starsky & Hutch fame). There is definitely a different voice here writing, and had not the secret been spoiled, it would've been tough -I think- for anyone to realize Holt was Donald E. Westlake. It does not resemble his Parker or Dortmunder works, as well as his other serious and comic novels.

Also during this mid-1980s period, he was doing screenplays, as he would write the 1987 pilot episode for TV series Father Dowling Mysteries (that I didn’t know), the 1987 film The Stepfather and, eventually, the 1990 screenplay for the Oscar nominated film The Grifters, based on the Jim Thompson novel (he would also offer some help with the James Bond franchise in the 90s, something already discussed with 2017 novel Forever and a Death). So much of the business aspects that fill out the story, all the dealings with agents, writes, and producers, is based on those experiences.

You can also tell that Westlake did not live in SoCal or spend much time here, as well. Mainly, he calls the freeways by their names, like the San Diego Freeway, which is known locally as The 405 (yes, we add the “the”). While in the 1950s the local freeways were named after the places the pass through or ended (they also carried multiple route numbers), by 1964, the state simplified its highway numbering systems, ensuring that, with few exceptions, each freeway would bear only one route number. Around the same time, a flurry of new construction added unfamiliar freeway names to the region's road maps. Drivers found it easier to learn new numbers like the 605 or the 91 rather than new names like the San Gabriel River Freeway or the Redondo Beach Freeway. So, theoretically, Sam Holt would’ve called freeways by those nicknames more than their true names. I’m not sure if Westlake did this because he wanted the books to have a wider audience, or didn’t know, but with a few exceptions, most native and transplanted residence calls all the freeways by their numbers (hell, even Caltrans has stopped including those names on their signage). The only exception is Route 1 here, and it only goes by it's name, Pacific Coast Highway, or just PCH.