Books: Calling Dr. Patchwork By Ron Goulart (1978)

“Raffles Tunny, a juggler in the employ of the United States government, is relaxing at his Swiss chalet when a killer comes to call. He’s found the next day, electrocuted in the style of serial murderer Shocker Fulson, the man with the electric touch. The trouble is, Shocker’s dead—cremated and interred in New Orleans—and Raffles is not the first victim. Six other government-employed entertainers are have been murdered, all of them killed in the style of an executed madman. A case this insane demands an equally insane detective, which means it’s time to call Odd Jobs, Inc. Jake and Hildy Pace have made names for themselves solving impossible murders. But nabbing the copycat lunatic will mean facing down the Amateur Mafia, a gang of belly-button ventriloquists, and the strangest doctor the future has ever seen. One false step, and they’ll follow Raffles to the great music hall in the sky.”

Set in the near-future world of 2002, author Ron Goulart shines his satiric wit at politics and entertainment-influenced society with a distinctly noir undertones of a detective story. Like a lot of Goulart’s sci-fi, it’s filled with absurd touches that includes a president who seemly won not on political acumen, but on the strength of their ability to be entertaining, along with the two-party system -the Republican-Democrats and the Democrat-Republicans. I’ve often bemoaned the idea that a lot of sci-fi writers of the Golden Age who wrote about the 21st Century still had people smoking. Of course, this was written in the 1970s after the Surgeon Generals reports on the hazards of smoking, so here Goulart’s 2002 includes the fact that tobacco smoking is outlawed.

Calling Dr. Patchwork is the first of four slim volumes Goulart wrote featuring Jake and Hildy and their company, Odd Job’s Inc. I’ll get to the other three in coming months. A prolific writer of that 60s and 70s era, Goulart created several series of various lengths. Some are just weird, but all are not that intellectually challenging –mostly because they seemly are juvenile in tone. I’ve often thought of him as a man who wanted to write hardboiled noir thrillers and “men’s adventure” books, but found a niche doing these types of books (he also was and still is, a great connoisseur of comic books).

Much like his Groucho Marx detective novels, this is light entertainment, silly jokes, and sly social commentary.

Now onto 2022.

Books: The Long Call By Ann Cleeves (2019)

 

“In North Devon, where two rivers converge and run into the sea, Detective Matthew Venn stands outside the church as his father’s funeral takes place. Once loved and cherished, the day Matthew left the strict evangelical community he grew up in, he lost his family too. Now, as he turns and walks away again, he receives a call from one of his team. A body has been found on the beach nearby: a man with a tattoo of an albatross on his neck, stabbed to death. The case calls Matthew back into the community he thought he had left behind, as deadly secrets hidden at its heart are revealed, and his past and present collide.”

The Long Call is the first in a new series of detective novels from the writer known mostly for the Vera Stanhope novels and the Shetland Island tales. It details the career and home life of Detective Matthew Venn. His back story is a bit interesting; at one time he and his family belonged to a strict religious community. When he was teen, though, he broke away when he finally realized he no longer believed in anything he had been taught. He was banished from the church and disowned by his parents. Eventually, he would become a cop and marry a man named Jonathan. But the death of father brings him back into the orbit of old life and with people he left behind. Now his job and home life are mixing, with the murder of a man who volunteered at the Woodyard, a community center where Jonathan is the administrator.  Per usual, there are many potential suspects, but Matthew’s team lack any evidence that connects anyone to the murder (and a few abductions of young women with Down syndrome, as well).

The story unfolds slowly, sometimes with tediousness, but ultimately a satisfying whodunit. It does not fully explore Mathew’s time after he left the church and his relationship with Jonathan is not that fully developed –they seemed more like best friends than spouses (Cleeves sort of neuters them, perhaps because most of the readers of her previous works are women who, while accepting a gay detective, don’t want to read passages where they show affection towards each other?).

Cleeves also does not offer any real opinion on Venn’s religious upbringing. Sure there are some typical lines about powerful men who make up rules because it brings them power and prestige, and his relationship with his mother is strained, but she plays it relatively safe here. Whether she plans to expand on this in the next book...well, we'll see. 

Books: The Damsel by Richard Stark (1967)

The eighth Parker novels was The Handle. At the end of that book, partner Alan Grofield is wounded and Parker gets him safely to a hotel in Mexico City and has a doctor tend to the wound. Then Parker returns to the U.S., leaving Grofield with his share of the cash from the job, to recover.

It's at this point, The Damsel (the first of four tales spun-off from the Parker series) begins. Grofield is lying in bed in his fourth floor hotel room when, seemingly out of nowhere, a very attractive young woman climbs through the window. She's apparently fleeing from someone and thinks the room is empty because it is dark. Grofield surprises her and demands to know what she's doing. She tells him a few obvious lies; he tells her a few in return, and the story is off and running.

However, It doesn’t take the thugs long to figure out where Elly is hiding, and soon both are on the run.  The rest of the plot revolves around a complex web involving three fathers and three grown children, an imminent political assassination, a former governor of Pennsylvania, the current dictator of a banana republic, and a one-eyed scarred ex-convict running around half-naked with a very large knife.

There is an odd mix of violence and witty dialogue here, a far-fetched plot, and a bit of a travelogue thrown in as well. It seems, from my perspective, The Damsel is also a dry run for what would become the Dortmunder tales a few years later. Alan is an interesting character and Elly is perhaps Stark’s first genuine female character who is not out for herself.

So Grofield falls somewhere between Parker and Dortmunder. He has some dark aspects of the violent world of Parker, but offers a somewhat cheerful outlook, with some wittiness here and there. A fun diversion away from Parker and his killer takes all world.

Books: Swashbucklers By Dan Hanks (2021)

 

"When Cisco Collins returns to his home town thirty years after saving it from being swallowed by a hell mouth opened by an ancient pirate ghost, he realises that being a childhood hero isn’t like it was in the movies. Especially when nobody remembers the heroic bits – even the friends who once fought alongside him. Struggling with single parenting and treated as bit of a joke, Cisco isn’t really in the Christmas spirit like everyone else. A fact that’s made worse by the tendrils of the pirate’s powers creeping back into our world and people beginning to die in bizarre ways. With the help of a talking fox, an enchanted forest, a long-lost friend haunting his dreams, and some 80s video game consoles turned into weapons, Cisco must now convince his friends to once again help him save the day. Yet they quickly discover that being a ghostbusting hero is so much easier when you don’t have schools runs, parent evenings, and nativity plays to attend. And even in the middle of a supernatural battle, you always need to bring snacks and wipes"

Author Dan Hanks describes Swashbucklers as “Ghostbusters meets Goonies meets Stranger Things meets IT.” Indeed, this book plays homage to many things 80s, which often reminded me of Ready Player One –except less complex and smug. It plays out like a sequel to a previous novel, where the kids, now adults with lives, with their own children, and worries more grounded in reality than magic, must return back to their small town and confront the evil that they thought once stopped, only to discover the villain clings to the skin of the world –or worlds, as the idea of the multiverse is included here. It’s packed with a lot of charm, nostalgia, witty dialogue, and weird things. Dark Peak is right out of Stephen King’s Derry, a town that exists in ether, ignoring the dangers that surround them, and quietly passing them off as “gas leaks” or with other lies.

The book is fun, not necessarily too dark –most of it leans into the idea of adults (some who have never grown up) being too old to confront the magical evils of the world. The trope works here most of the time, but because Hanks is borrowing a lot from these 80s pop culture media and he’s having fun. The reader will have fun as well, even if they were not born or lived through the 1980s.

Hanks does one last 1980s homage here –the ending: a little Back to the Future and Quantum Leap, as someone “leaps” into their younger self and then goes off to right what once went wrong. I’m unsure if Hanks will write a sequel or just figured out a neat way to end the tale. It’s frustrating, if only because there is no real resolve, but also daring as well. I mean, not everything has to be a franchise. 

Books: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz (2012)

 

"Dante can swim. Ari can't. Dante is articulate and self-assured. Ari has a hard time with words and suffers from self-doubt. Dante gets lost in poetry and art. Ari gets lost in thoughts of his older brother who is in prison. Dante is fair skinned. Ari's features are much darker. It seems that a boy like Dante, with his open and unique perspective on life, would be the last person to break down the walls that Ari has built around himself. But against all odds, when Ari and Dante meet, they develop a special bond that will teach them the most important truths of their lives, and help define the people they want to be. But there are big hurdles in their way, and only by believing in each other―and the power of their friendship―can Ari and Dante emerge stronger on the other side." 

There is so much to love in novel for the YA (and adult) crowd. A lyrical tale of two teens who meet at the time the universe needs them most, one a light skinned Mexican and the other, a darker skinned one. Light and dark, one who has open and supportive parents, one who is also supportive ones, but both Ari’s parents have dark secrets that have been –unintentionally- transferred to their youngest son. I can understand Ari a lot –a teenager who has no friends (and doesn’t want them) - who is angry at the world. And he has no understanding exactly why this is, why he feels this way. But Ari understands that the world has written his story, knows its ending, and easily accepts he’ll travel down the road his older brother Bernardo went –who is in prison, but Ari’s parent refuse to talk about it.

Dante is the light that Ari has been searching for and it’s very clear early on that he’s in love with Ari of -course the Ari does not catch on right away. Their friendship is portrayed very honestly here, with realistic dialogue and writer Benjamin Alire Sáenz gorgeous prose filled with poetry and visual trickery. Set in El Pasco in 1987, Alire Sáenz captures the era with fine detail and almost dream-like feelings. It will remind many older readers of time when things were complicated, but still simple. When friendship meant everything and where you can –if you try- learn to reject what the outside universe expects of you