Books: Nightwork By Joseph Hansen (1984)

“Gifford Gardens has seen better days. As white families move away to the suburbs to flee the flooding and neglect, the city in turn cares less about fixing the problems. What was once a nice neighborhood has become a slum and a violent battleground for rival gangs. Paul and Angela Myers are among the white families that remained. With the economy in a downturn and wages frozen, Paul takes a job long-haul truck driving. The freight he moves around is strictly “no questions,” but Paul is an honest man and begins to wonder about what he has become a part of.  One night, Paul’s truck flies off a cliff and explodes in midair. Did he fall asleep at the wheel, or was he murdered? Paul’s life insurance company hires renowned private investigator Dave Brandstetter to look at inconsistencies with the accident. While digging into Paul’s past, Dave will uncover a haunting connection between Paul’s untimely death and the happier years in the declining neighborhood of Gifford Gardens.”

A bit darker, a bit more nihilist, Nightwork has Dave Brandstetter on a ruthless –though in the end, rather pointless- investigation into murder and mayhem on the outer edges of Los Angeles. Still, it’s fast-paced novel, and Hansen excels at creating memorable characters –even if they’re rather ugly and mean. But under Hansen’s deft hand, with his sparse prose that paints a picture both beautiful and gross, the series remains excellent.

The novel picks up a few months after the events of Gravedigger, where reporter –and Dave’s current boyfriend- Cecil Harris is still recovering from the injuries he received in the final pages of that book. Here is also where this book series really works, as Dave ponders if Cecil can fully recover from the psychological damage caused by the bullets. He wants to protect the young man, but is it possible when that young man wants to be involved with Dave’s sometime violent job?

Still, a lot people die here and a lot was left unsolved, and it also featured another abrupt ending, so by its final pages, I wondered what our dogmatic insurance investigator got out of all this. While it reflects the age it was written –the early 1980s, - it’s also prophetic in some respect –if only because nothing has changed in respect to gangs, street and gun violence. 

Books: Doctor Who: Josephine and the Argonauts By Paul Magrs (2023)

“Everyone knows the Doctor loves museums (it's his way of keeping score). But when Jo Grant and the Doctor visit the British Museum in London, they might have got more than they bargained for. A mysterious object is revealed, which grants those who touch it strange visions of Greek Myths. Gods, warriors and monsters are contained within this device, which its discover calls the MythoScope. But there is something sinister at play. A powerful influence seems to be controlling the MythoScope,  mastering it. Jo and the Doctor must enter the MythoScope to face an old and terrible enemy - bargaining with Zeus, battling dragons and journeying into the underworld. As dangers beset them on all sides, only an object of wondrous power can save them from total destruction.”

Josephine and the Argonauts is the fourth in the Puffin Classics Crossovers series that features various Doctor’s interacting public domain literature characters and situations. After dealing with the Wizard of Oz (13^th Doctor), Camelot (10^th Doctor), and Robin Hood (4^th Doctor), this one takes on Greek Myths and features the 3^rd Doctor and companion Jo Grant (which takes place after the events the 1973 serial Planet of the Daleks and just before her departure serial The Green Death).

It’s a cute, often funny tale that takes all the Greek Myths we’ve grown up with in books, TV, and movies and then takes on a adventure with the most well known, like the story of the titular Argonauts, of course, but we also see Medusa, Prometheus and the eagle, Peruses and Pegasus, and many others which all leads the reader to the Garden at the End of the World. The plot itself is actually fairly light, as it was designed for kids, but as I noted, it’s very entertaining, humorous, and fits perfectly within the Third Doctor’s era.

Noted above, the, story is set in Jon Pertwee’s fourth year as the Doctor, which author Paul Magrs further muddles the UNIT timeline by giving the date of 1973 (too long of a story to get into), but the Doctor also mentions Gallifrey, which the viewing audience in the 1970s would not learn about until the Pertwee’s fifth season opener. Also, for long time Who fans, Magrs gives us a non-canon explanation of why The Master vanishes from the series after the serial Frontier in Space. Of course, sadly, Roger Delgado died in a car accident while on location in Istanbul in June of 1973, but here he is escorted into Hades by Prometheus. When The Master returned three years later in the Tom Baker serial The Deadly Assassin, his desiccated look can be explained by his time in Hell.

Books: Gravedigger By Joseph Hansen (1982)

“Two years ago Charles Westover disgraced himself and his family when he was disbarred for bribery. Westover’s daughter Serenity, disgusted with her once beloved father, ran away to a cult founded by a mesmerizingly handsome young man, a self-appointed messiah going by the grimly grandiose name of Azrael. The whereabouts of Serenity pass unknown for years until the police raid Azrael’s compound and discover that the cult leader lived up to his ghastly “Angel of Death” moniker. Thinking his daughter has been murdered, Charles Westover claims her life insurance, and then he too vanishes. Insurance companies don’t like to cut a check without a body and especially don’t like cutting a check to someone who is also missing. Hired as a private investigator for Banner Insurance, David Brandstetter quickly finds himself in a complicated maze of lies and hidden histories. And Dave suspects that, just like in the labyrinths of old, there will be a monster at the end of it.”

What I like about this series (and this could cover all genres of fiction in the modern era) is that they are entertaining in their own way, but are also somewhat shorter and more tightly focused and plotted -which these days appeals to me more. Multivolume series, ones than can clock in at a thousand pages, hold no thrall over me; perhaps it’s just my age or are editors just allowing writers to go off tangents that don’t impact the main narrative?

 

This sort-of happened to Donald E. Westlake in his later years, especially with the Parker novels that went from slim, fast-paced thrillers to overlong tales. Part of the issue was the last eight novels in that series were released in hardcover. To justify the costs of the format versus the mass market versions (a system which had been around for generations, but publishers were not making a lot money on), those hard cover versions had to be longer and thus more subplots had to be added. So now stuff that was, or could’ve superfluous, is included in these novels just, it would seem, to add to the page count.

 

Much like Westlake –and his pseudonym of Richard Stark- Hansen tells you a story full of good, bad, and indifferent people and then bows out. It’s a no frills tale, but it can be a punch to the gut. Hansen’s Los Angeles is atmospheric, dark, dirty, and creepy. This tale is changes the formulaic aspect of the five previous tales, but Dave remains more dedicated to his job than any normal insurance investigator would ever be –the car chase through the hills is an example. Also, with this book, we get  bit more time with Dave's personal life than there has been in previous books, which might be a plus or a minus depending on your issues with gay relationships (and the fact that Cecil Harris –back from a few books ago, and now twenty-one- has started a relationship with the much older Dave).

The book just sort of ends, and leaves us with cliffhanger. But I don’t think it’s out of character for this type of genre –there were some Parker titles that just ended with no epilogue or coda.

Books: Holly By Stephen King (2023)

“When Penny Dahl calls the Finders Keepers detective agency hoping for help locating her missing daughter, Holly is reluctant to accept the case. Her partner, Pete, has Covid. Her (very complicated) mother has just died. And Holly is meant to be on leave. But something in Penny Dahl’s desperate voice makes it impossible for Holly to turn her down. Mere blocks from where Bonnie Dahl disappeared live Professors Rodney and Emily Harris. They are the picture of bourgeois respectability: married octogenarians, devoted to each other, and semi-retired lifelong academics. But they are harboring an unholy secret in the basement of their well-kept, book-lined home, one that may be related to Bonnie’s disappearance. And it will prove nearly impossible to discover what they are up to: they are savvy, they are patient, and they are ruthless. Holly must summon all her formidable talents to outthink and outmaneuver the shockingly twisted professors.”

Early in his prolific career, I read an article that took King to task for setting his tales of terror in a very specific period in history or, if I may borrow a Doctor Who phrase, a fixed point in time. The general complaint was that by using pop cultural references, by using current brand names, by saying what year the tales are set, his books become less universal, less likely to stand the test of time. That three hundred years from now (if we survive), people reading his tales will not understand the references he makes. As someone pointed out recently on a Facebook page dedicated to King, they had recently watched the 1976 movie version of King’s first novel, 1974’s Carrie. The poster said the film held up because it plot could take place today, nearly fifty years after the publication and film, that because the book and film avoided pop cultural references, it holds up.

Here with Holly, King sets his tale at a very exact era in recent American history –the COVID years. He also takes on a former president he has been very vocal about in disliking, along with that former president’s acolytes. COVID plays a central part of the story, which is set after the events of the novella If it Bleeds. Holly, who through various tales, has grown from a shy, recluse woman on the autism spectrum, to a brave and ethical women running the private investigation company Finders Keepers, which was started by her late friend, Bill Hodges.

King, also, has never been one to keep quiet his political feelings. They’re there through most of his works, sometime subtle, but of recent years, mostly there on the page (see Gwendy’s Final Task for where that really busted through). So the virus and Donald Trump become secondary background characters in King’s dark and often creepy tale of murder and cannibalism. But for some of his Constant Readers, this open display of political theater has angered them. Some, like maybe King’s early critics, hate the idea that the legendary writer has decided to add his liberal politics to what should be an horror tale that could’ve taken place in 1974 or 2023. That it’s no longer a universal tale, but a story (maybe a historical genre tale?) set in one period of time and place. Who knows if this is good or bad? King does not care –he’s now 75, very rich, and no longer needs to pander to anyone but himself.

Those aspects aside, the book is good, with villains you want to hate. Holly Gibney remains a character you love or hate, though, but she is growing and that’s good. The more the character evolves the more real she becomes. Both Jerome and his sister Barbara become more supporting characters here, though both go through some dramatic personal changes (and writers like to have characters that write, so I can see why King took the Robinson’s in that direction. I mean, both his sons have become writers, and his wife has had novels published, so it only seems logical these characters move this way as well.

Overall, Holly is a good mixing of horror, mystery, historical realness, and procedural private eye work. It may never reach a wider audience than his Constant Readers, but King remains at the top of his game. King has stated he plans a large short story collection planned for 2024, and at least one more adventure featuring Holly. And what of a second sequel to The Talisman? King has said he has ideas, including a long letter sent by co-writer Peter Straub before he passed last year with even more ideas for a third book. But King seems a bit unsure at the moment. Perhaps, it’s because a third book would mean a few years of commitment and lengthy book, as well. The “epic” books are on the way out, as publishers are less and less interested in long books.

But it still would be worth the wait.