W. Heath Robinson. Absurdities (1975 reprint with alterations)

     W. Heath Robinson. Absurdities (1975 reprint with alterations). Robinson selected the images in this book himself, but the publishers have replaced some that were reprinted in another book with new images. No matter, the drawings are charming and wonderfully bizarre, and the book is well worth this second look through. My copy is ex-North York Public Library; I can’t recall where I found it, or else someone gave it to me. It prompted me to do a web search on Robinson; I found a number of sites and images I hadn’t seen before. I’ve not explored all the available material (most of the hits were for used book shops), but will eventually save what I find on a CD. **** (2006)

Gore Vidal. Dark Green, Bright Red (1950)

     Gore Vidal. Dark Green, Bright Red (1950) An early work by the master of the louche and creepily pornographic. Peter, a cashiered ex-Marine, drifts into the party planning and executing a coup in the stereotypical Latin American country. The evil General’s daughter supplies the sex interest, according to the blurb, but I didn’t get that far. -1 star (2006)

Dennis Reid. The Snowman Cometh (1966)

     Dennis Reid. The Snowman Cometh (1966) A Sexton Blake mystery. Adolescent fantasy of the worst kind, with noble noblemen (except when they are utter dastards), salt of the earth lower orders, maidens that chastely love from a distance, femmes fatales of unspeakable (and actually unimaginable, on the evidence) sinfulness, and so on. Workmanlike writing of its kind, but the puzzle isn’t interesting enough, and there is no doubt it will be “solved” by some insight of Sexton Blake’s that the reader cannot even guess at, there being no clues to support it. I never took a fancy to Sexton Blake when I was younger, and I couldn’t get through the book now. -1 star. (2006)

Howard Engel. Murder Sees the Light (1984)

   Howard Engel.  Murder Sees the Light (1984) This is third or fourth in the series (I really must check up on this), and Benny Cooperman exhibits the same mix of cynicism and romantic hope as in the earlier books. Engel’s skill is character and location, and he manages both with just the right touch of detached amusement needed to make this entertainment enjoyable and not too demanding. Some of the clues are telegraphed a little too obviously, but others are too obscure, so I guess it balances out.
      This time Cooperman’s job is to watch a televangelist on the run from the civil law, and if possible prevent his murder. As it is, two people die violently, and Cooperman almost does; and there’s an ancient death that turns out to be a murder, too. Cooperman decides not to turn in the perp of this last one, for reasons only vaguely moral. Nicely done; a better than average crime novel. **½ (2006)

Wexford arrives: From Doon with Death

     Ruth Rendell. From Doon With Death (1964) The first Wexford, short, little character development, a fairly simple puzzle presented fairly, but we already see Rendell’s fascination with abnormal and unusual psychology. There are no apparent reasons for Margaret Parson’s murder, and the only clues are some poetry books with passionate inscriptions, given her by a mysterious lover named Doon. Doon is of course the murderer, but the usual misdirections and unrevealed facts caused by people’s desire for respectability slow the investigation.
     Wexford and Burden make a good team. In later books, Rendell develops Burden’s character differently than hinted at here; only his narrow education suggests the rigidity of his moral judgments that she presents and explores in later books. Wexford already has the well-read mixture of cynicism and compassion that marks him throughout the series. A good beginning. **½

Brian Aldiss. Who Can Replace A Man? (1965)

     Brian Aldiss. Who Can Replace A Man? (1965) Aldiss tried his hand at most of the sub-genres of SF. These tales show his skill as well as his powerful and off-kilter imagination. I’ve read many of them in various anthologies; they were worth re-reading. Aldiss focusses on the human costs of technologies and/or encounters with unexpected glitches in the workings of the universe. He’s very good at making even the most bizarre premises work. Man In His Time posits that a cosmonaut returning from a first exploration of Mars exists about 3 minutes ahead of Earth time. The most difficult thing is for Earth-time people to plan what they will do 3 minutes from now. Psyclops deals with aliens ho can mimic human form, but cannot of course mimic humanity. A Cold War story about infiltration by the enemy, it evokes the fear of the mysterious and dangerous Other. Old Hundredth is an elegy on the passing of Man, leaving behind an earth peopled with genetic experiments, animals with powers beyond any current human’s, and yet unable to follow humanity to whatever plane of existence humans have achieved.
     A good introduction to Aldiss’s universes, in the UK the book was titled Best Science Fiction Stories of Brian Aldiss. I can’t quarrel with that title. ***

2019: minor corrections.

Ruth Rendell No More Dying Then (1971)

     Ruth Rendell No More Dying Then (1971) Mike Burden’s wife has died of cancer, leaving him almost paralysed by grief, and unable to see what his emotional isolation is doing to his children and their aunt, who has come to help Mike look after them. Then a little boy disappears, Burden interviews Gemma, the mother, and falls in lust with her. She desires him for comfort, and for temporary distraction from her grief at the loss of her son John. The case eventually wraps up when Gemma discovers Leonie, her ex-husband’s mistress, with the boy. She refuses to press charges, because Leonie has always wanted a child. Mike lets her go with some relief, as she is not a suitable candidate for wife and step-mother of his children. But the affair has served not only to assuage his grief, but to teach him about the validity of emotion, which his narrowly moral view of the world has prevented him from recognising.
     The boy’s disappearance stirs up memories of a girl who disappeared a year or two earlier. Her body is found in a disused cistern. Her murderer however has suffered a stroke, and cannot be brought to justice.  He was in some sense avenging the death of his own daughter, allowed to drown by a supremely self-centred man who married the missing girl’s mother.
     Rendell is exploring several examples of parent-child relationships, grief, anxiety, fear, and self-centredness. Read as such, the novel would provide  materials for discussion by a reading club or college literature class. Read as a crime novel, it offers a couple of plausible puzzles and their solutions. Read as a chapter in Mike Burden’s life, it feels superficial. He condemns Gemma’s free-spirited style of life, with household duties scanted, dress to unconventional, moral judgments avoided or too mild for his taste, but it’s a condemnation too stereotypical to be as convincing a Rendell might wish it to be. However, his lust/love for her overwhelms him, and his relief when she rejects his offer of marriage and goes off to look after her son and live with Leonie, reveals the old Mike Burden, puritanical and duty-obsessed as ever, but far less judgmental.
     And odd duck of a book, which doesn’t quite fit into the Wexford canon. I read it over two days, but what kept me reading was not the crime but the psychology. **