markhodderauthor

[markhodderauthor]

I just read THE SEVEN DIALS MYSTERY by Agatha Christie (1929). I'm reading Christie in publication order. This is her 11th, and feels like a cross between P. G. Wodehouse and John Buchanan. It's a period piece and very dated in its attitude toward class and race, but it shows off to good effect the author's mischievous sense of humour. However, it is far from her best. The plot is too convoluted, with rather dull stretches, and a "whodunnit" solution that involved unnecessary trickery. Christie strained a little too hard with this one!

[markhodderauthor]

I just read EVEN IN THE BEST FAMILIES by Rex Stout (1950). The 17th in the wonderful Nero Wolfe series and the last to feature the recurring villain, Arnold Zeck. For a good chunk of this novel, Nero Wolfe makes himself scarce, leaving Archie Goodwin to carry the case. While the long absence of the most eccentric half of the team robs the reader of their always delightful banter, it is nevertheless highly entertaining to witness Archie operating independently … and when Wolfe returns—WOW! It's the biggest surprise of the series so far! Okay, it's a little implausible, but Archie's reaction is priceless. I'm reading the series in order, and this is the best so far.

[markhodderauthor]

I just read for the #MyNovelLife challenge (rules in the comments): THE GRAVEYARD APARTMENT by Mariko Koike (English translation published in 1988, when I was 26). It has been a long time since I disliked a novel as much as I disliked this one. I found the quality of the writing very poor (especially the dialogue), the supposedly spooky scenes were badly mishandled, and the story itself failed to deliver anything original. By the halfway point, I was utterly bored but struggled on hoping it would get better. It didn't.

[markhodderauthor]

I just read A SOUR APPLE TREE by John Blackburn (1958). John Blackburn was a British author who seems almost forgotten now. However, Valancourt Books and Centipede Press have recently republished many of his novels, so hopefully he will reach a new generation of readers. Blackburn wrote from 1958 to 1985, mainly thrillers that strayed into horror and SF. His first novel was A SCENT OF NEW-MOWN HAY, in which a fungoid pandemic affects only women. It introduced General Charles Kirk of British Intelligence, who reappears in this second novel. Kirk is an excellent character, brusque and heroic but physically limited (and frustrated) by his age. We also meet Miss Penny Wise, who will reappear in later novels. Unusually for novels of the period, she is a thoroughly independent and capable young woman. Despite the language and themes feeling very English and of the 50s—the plot concerns a wave of murder­suicides that seem connected to a wartime traitor—I thoroughly enjoyed this one, and it left me keen to read the rest of Blackburn's work in published order.

[markhodderauthor]

I just read for the #MyNovelLife challenge (rules in the comments): THE BLACK DAHLIA (L.A. Quartet 1) by James Ellroy (from 1987, when I was 25). Based on a real unsolved murder case, this novel is extremely dark and gritty, brimming with police brutality, unpleasant characters, sleaze, corruption, sex and squalor. Reading it is like receiving a punch to the gut. The characters are deep, their motives misbegotten but understandable, their fate creeping up on them with awful inevitability. Everything feels deeply twisted, and long before I reached the author's confessional afterword, I was gripped by the sense that some awful and complex relationship was being exorcised by means of the story. The writing is superb but the novel isn't perfect. The plot sprawls and feels unevenly paced, though the power of the narrative does much to disguise it. That criticism aside, I highly recommend this one, but trust me, you'll want to shower after you finish it.

[markhodderauthor]

I just read DRAY PRESCOT 1: TRANSIT TO SCORPIO by Alan Burt Akers (Kenneth Bulmer) (1972). Like the BLADE novels of Jeffrey Lord, this is a series that sat on my shelves throughout my teens but somehow never got read. In those days, this sort of thing was right up my street, so how and why it escaped me, I cannot fathom. Taking Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom series as its template, it is standard "sword and planet" fare, and if that's the itch you want scratched, it does the job nicely. Certainly, it is of a better standard than Lin Carter's stuff, which always reads like fanfic, though it doesn't come close to Jack Vance's PLANET OF ADVENTURE books, which I rate as the gold standard of the genre. I'm starting the series as a replacement for John Norman's GOR, which I recently re-read up to vol.5 before abandoning it due to the author's bizarre obsession with female subjugation. Interestingly, in TRANSIT, Bulmer gives his planet a distant continent named "Gah" where females are enslaved—a clear dig at Norman. Good man, Bulmer! Nothing ground-breaking here but it was a fun read and I shall definitely continue with the series.

[markhodderauthor]

I just read THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WORLD 3: WARDENCLYFFE by F. Paul Wilson (2018). At 144 pages, this novella is a quick but very entertaining read. It takes as its starting point Nikola Tesla's experiments with wireless power transmission, which in true history were abandoned due to lack of funding. Told from the perspective of a woman posing as a male electrical engineer, the tale recounts how Tesla's creation breaks through a veil between worlds, allowing Lovecraftian monstrosities to pass through (Lovecraft actually gets a mention). It's a good read, with an excellent protagonist, and sets in place characters who will soon reappear as the series progresses.

[markhodderauthor]

I just read SPACE 1999: BREAKAWAY by E. C. Tubb (1975). Tubb's DUMAREST series is pretty good but you'll not find the same quality of writing here. Plainly, this was a means to a fast buck and nothing more. So, we have a workmanlike retelling of episodes 1, 13, 19 and 10 from the first season of the cult Gerry Anderson live-action TV series. Why those episodes in that order, I don't know. This would have been a great opportunity to explain away the batshit crazy science (or rather the lack of science) at the heart of the show's concept but…. nope. Just a straight narration, a short and easy read, put it aside and forget. I shall skip the remaining 11 novelisations and limit myself to the handful of original novels.

[markhodderauthor]

I was reading for the #MyNovelLife challenge (rules in the comments): INHUMAN by John Russo (1987, when I was 25) but… DNF. Set in the depths of the American south, it concerns a small community attacked by terrorists who have survived a plane crash but are insane as a result of oxygen deprivation. I made it past the halfway mark but felt increasingly bored. Great cover, but the writing is flat, filled with surplus detail, and slooooowww. I shall have to rethink 1987.

[markhodderauthor]

I just read POMPEII by Robert Harris (2003). I really enjoy novels set during the height of the Roman Empire, so had high hopes for this one. The story follows a water engineer over the four days leading up to the eruption of Vesuvius, during which time he investigates damage to an aqueduct, uncovers a case of corruption, and meets the girl of his dreams. The plot is, to be honest, fairly humdrum, and there are a few modernisms of language that struck me as anachronistic (for example, neither the term nor concept of "teenager" came into use until 1959. "Youth" might have been a better choice of word). The descriptions of Roman culture fall strangely flat. Much better can be found in the brilliant "Vespasian" novels of Robert Fabbri and even in the the pulpy "Eagles" series by Andrew Quiller. Nevertheless, I enjoyed POMPEII and would class it as average entertainment that I'm glad I read but am unlikely to remember.

[markhodderauthor]

I just read THE STRANGE CASE OF MR. PELHAM by Anthony Armstrong (1957) for #marchmysterymadness. Despite feeling a little old-fashioned, even staid, this story still intrigues and finishes on a creepy note that lingers. It concerns a man who becomes aware that a doppelgänger is intruding into his life… and making a better job of living it. The idea is much better than the execution, which could have been more dramatic, as is demonstrated by the rather good movie version filmed in 1970: THE MAN WHO HAUNTED HIMSELF with Roger Moore in the lead role (of his films, it was his personal favourite). The novel builds to a mysteriously creepy climax but it's very much of its time and I can't help feeling that a lot more could have been made of it.

[markhodderauthor]

I just read FABULOUS HARBOURS by Michael Moorcock (1995). This is a collection of eleven interconnected short stories, four of which I have read before, and two of which Mike and I are rewriting for a forthcoming project. It was read for work purposes but I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially the Elric yarn (THE BLACK BLADE'S SUMMONING) and the Jerry Cornelius (THE ENIGMA WINDOWS). The stories for the most part date from what is often referred to as Mike's middle period, wherein the mythology of the multiverse is more complex than in the earlier tales. I have re-read most of his material multiple times but this is an era I have not much revisited, so shall have to soon correct that oversight.

[markhodderauthor]

I just re-read CENTENNIAL by James Michener (1979). My third visit to this magnificent epic, one of my all-time favourite novels. It was published in 1974 but I first read it in 1980, then again about 25 years ago. The sprawling yarn begins with a lengthy description of the geological formation of the land on which the fictional town of Centennial will eventually be built. It then follows the development of animal life from dinosaurs to beavers and bison. This takes up about 18% of the novel and might put some people off, what with the dearth of dialogue and lack of a human element. Then, however, the trapper, Pasquinel, arrives on the scene, and from that point on the book becomes very difficult to put down. The challenges and isolation faced by the early pioneers is visceral, there is a marvellous sense of a vast and difficult land, and of its "Indian" inhabitants existing as an integral part of it. More characters arrive and are brilliantly portrayed. As a reader, I became attached to each of them, and when they aged and died, I mourned their loss. Michener creates an amazing sense of place—the land is as much a character in the book as the people—and makes it something to love but also to fear. He does not gloss over the mistreatment meted out to it. In fact, much of the America he shows us here is damned ugly. The racism. The greed. The live now, let others pay later attitude. It fills the story with tragedy and sadness… much more than I recalled from my previous reads. Perhaps it all goes off the boil a little bit toward the end, but, wow, what a wonderfully immersive yarn. A mammoth 1086 pages but I didn’t want it to end!

[markhodderauthor]

I just read for the #MyNovelLife challenge (rules in the comments): SOULSTORM by Chet Williamson (1986, when I was 24). This has similarities to HELL HOUSE by Richard Matheson (1971) but with an original twist in that the ghosts are solid manifestations rather than phantoms. Unfortunately, they are haunting characters who are all faulted to the point of being unpleasant, which lowers the stakes, as it leaves the reader feeling that they deserve everything they get. There's also a "gay conversion" element that anyone with any sense will find wince-inducingly dumb. Overall, I'd say there's sufficient originality here to make it a good but not an excellent read.

[markhodderauthor]

I just read for the #MyNovelLife challenge (rules in the comments): FLASHMAN no.8 — FLASHMAN AND THE DRAGON by George MacDonald Fraser (from 1985, when I was 23). My own novels usually involve fictional characters dealing with real events from history. I'm also a bit of a Victorian history buff. It should come as no surprise, then, that I adore the Flashman series. I read the first seven volumes in quick succession, then needed a rest, which somehow turned into a five-year gap. Now, I have returned, and wow, I've missed Harry Flashman! He is an amazing character and Fraser was a genius author. This one sees our cowardly hero caught up in China's Taiping Rebellion, which culminates in the destruction of the Old Summer Palace. All the usual high jinx are present and correct…violence, narrow escapes, comedy, deceptions, and a lot of shagging, but what really dominates is the sheer horror of British (and French) imperialism at its savage worst. The depiction of the wanton looting and burning of one of the wonders of any age filled me with rage and despair. That a novel can be entertaining, funny, exciting, yet still incite such an emotional response is incredible. I LOVED this one and will be reading the next in short order. A brilliant, brilliant, brilliant series.

[markhodderauthor]

I just read: RIPLEY no.5 - RIPLEY UNDER WATER by Patricia Highsmith (1991). This is the fifth and last of the Ripley novels. None of the four sequels are even close to as good as the first (THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY) but, of them, this is the one I enjoyed the most. As with the others, it is filled with the minutia of Ripley's day to day life… what he eats, what he wears, what music he listens to, what he daydreams. In the hands of any other author, it would be too much—and, certainly, if you took it out, the novel would be half the length—but somehow Highsmith makes it work, creating an immersive experience and communicating well Ripley's sociopathic nature. It's an intriguing story but there was too little of the antagonist and the end is incredibly abrupt. As a completist, I felt duty-bound to read the entire series but if you have never experienced Ripley, I recommend you read the first but not bother with the rest.

[markhodderauthor]

I just read: BLADE 2 - THE JADE WARRIOR by Jeffrey Lord (1969). This second volume follows the pattern of the first but does a much, much better job of delivering a gripping story. It's good pulpy SF/fantasy/S&S stuff, a little reminiscent of the early GOR books before that series was transformed into an outlet for its author's chronic sexual inadequacy. Here, Blade visits a society roughly equivalent to the Mongolian horse tribes, gets into lots of scrapes, and fights and shags his way out of them. The world-building is brief but excellent, and the plot exciting. I wish I had read these as a teenager (back then, I owned 33 of them but didn't read a single one). Young me would have loved them. Old me is impressed. I look forward to no.3.