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.

Books: A Talent For War by Jack McDevitt (1988)

“Everyone knows the legend of Christopher Sim. An interstellar hero with a rare talent for war, he changed mankind's history forever when he forged a rag-tag group of misfits into the weapon that broke the alien Ashiyyur. But now, in a forgotten file, Alex Benedict has found a startling piece of information. If it is true, then Christopher Sim was a fraud. If he is to see it through, Alex Benedict will have to follow the dark track of a legend, into the heart of an alien galaxy, where he will confront a truth far stranger than anything he could have imagined.”

The Talent for War is set 9,600 years into our future, where human civilization has spread through a substantial part of the Orion Arm of our galaxy. It’s the first of the Alex Benedict series and plays out like a hard science fiction novel with a mystery at its core. This novel is also concerned with a battle two centuries earlier, which helps fill in the backstory of this universe author Jack McDevitt has created.

It’s a bit prosaic, old style science fiction novel, with its own unique perspective on first contact with aliens. The first-person narrative is a bit distracting, as Alex comes off a bit self-centered, and with a bunch of supporting characters being a bit underwritten. Still, the whole historical research, the archeological mysteries that need to be solved works. It reads like anyone who is doing research into the past, with its dead ends, papers and memoirs (got to say our future ancestors did a hell of a lot of writing, considering our current ages obsession with videoing everything we do).  

I’m guessing that McDevitt’s choice of using Greek Myths as the backbone of tale is designed for readers to invest their time in those old tomes. It does feel a bit like an Odyssey we’re on.

Books: The Chinese Agent By Michael Moorcock (1970)

“Arnold Hodgkiss, a young Chinese American patent attorney whose secret identity is ‘Jewellery Jules’, is a notorious jewel thief who has never been caught, or even suspected. He has come to London to steal the Crown Jewels, is dreamily casing the Tower of London when a strange man approaches him and says ‘The crown is large’. Hodgkiss, nonplussed, replies ‘And very heavy’, unwittingly giving the correct countersign. The man, a spy, thrusts a parcel at Hodgkiss and disappears. Hodgkiss keeps the parcel, hoping to turn it in some way to his advantage. Soon afterward, Jerry Cornell receives a new assignment: he is to discover the whereabouts of plans for ‘Project Glass’, which have been stolen. Although the thief has been caught, the plans are still missing, and are believed to be in the hands of a fiendish Chinese agent named Kung Fu Tzu. Meanwhile, Kung is hopping mad because he never actually got the plans; they were given to Hodgkiss by mistake.” 

Author Michael Moorcock, best known as the author of fantasy fiction and science fiction-based parables, released The Chinese Agent in 1970, though it was a revision of book, called Somewhere in the Night, released during the height of the spy crazy in 1966 under the pseudonym of Bill Barclay.

The sometimes dark comedy of errors gets a bit absurd, as Cornell tracks Kung, who in turn follows Hodgkiss, who then eludes Kung but finds trouble aplenty when he tries to steal a brooch from a stall on Portobello Road. All awhile this is going on, Moorcock gives us a bizarre look at the city’s worst aspect, folks just above, I guess, homeless, and their antics on how they survive. That includes Jerry’s Uncle Edmund, a person “so fantastically dirty that the rubbish pile in his yard has congealed and come to life.” This is enhanced when the two communist operatives try to intimidate him, Edmond sneaks up behind them and pushes them into the quivering pile, escaping while they fight to extricate themselves from its gelatinous embrace. It’s less than flattering, but amusing just the same.

What work the most here are the agents themselves, as each whom have inflated opinion on their opposition. You’ll get a few good chuckles here, but the book is clearly of a certain age. But as parody of spy novels, it works.