Not Quite Dead Enough by Rex Stout

 

(pb; 1944: tenth book in Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe series. Novella anthology. “Not Quite Dead Enough” originally appeared in abridged form in The American Magazine, December 1942. “Booby Trap” was also published in The American Magazine in August 1944.)

 

From the back cover

“The army wants Nero Wolfe urgently, but he refuses their clarion call to duty. It takes Archie Goodwin to titillate Wolfe’s taste for crime with two malevolent morsels: a corpse that refuses to rest in peace and a sinister “accident” involving national security. It’s up to the Grandiose Master himself, Nero Wolfe, to set the traps to catch a pair of wily killers—as Archie lays the bait on the wrong side of the law.”

 

 

Review

Quite places Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe indirectly, in U.S. military service, specifically, the Army—after all, World War II is raging, and neither Goodwin nor his former employer (as of two months ago) are cowards, unlike other characters in Quite.

 

Quite is made up of two linked, patriotic-but-not-brain-dead novellas.

 

The first, “Not Quite Dead Enough,” features a returning supporting character, Lily Rowan, from Some Buried Caesar (1939). She, a fledgling romantic interest of Goodwin’s, tells him about a friend of hers (Anne), who might be in danger. Goodwin is busy with other stuff, like getting on with his new life as “Major Goodwin” in the Army intelligence sector, after ten years of working for Wolfe, as well as trying to get the suddenly health-conscious Wolfe to use his brain, not his body, in service to the Army. Then a dead body related to Lilly’s concerns come to their attention, shuffling Goodwin and Wolfe’s initial intentions back a step or two.

 

“Quite” is often delightful and hilarious, especially Wolfe and Goodwin’s friendly sparring and manipulations. As with other Wolfe works, there’s a strain of sexism on Goodwin and Wolfe’s part in both Quite novellas, more so with the latter character; this is not a complaint, merely noting how Quite reflects societal leanings back then. The killer is not surprising (for those who care about that), but the ride is a blast. Great read, “Quite.”

 

The second, “Booby Trap,” like its preceding novella, places our two leads in unfamiliar situations, often livening up the usual Wolfe story set-ups. “Trap,” however, is less warm and charming than Quite’s first novella, perhaps because of its military setting: Wolfe and Goodwin investigate the strange “accidental” death of an Army captain (Cross) who was on a hush-hush mission involving an experimental hand grenade. The stakes are heightened when another corpse is dramatically brought into (non-)being, compelling the two sleuths to further urgency in solving the case.

 

“Trap” is a good, fast-paced (for a Wolfe story) work, with a finish born of Wolfe’s dark side and notions regarding justice and, to a certain extent, patriotism.

 

Quite is followed by The Silent Speaker.

Clerks III: The Screenplay by Kevin Smith

 

(pb; 2022: screenplay)

 

From the back cover

“After suffering a massive heart attack, Randal enlists friends and fellow clerks Dante, Elias, Jay and Silent Bob to help him make a movie about life at the Quick Stop.

“This limited-edition version of the Clerks III screenplay was made for VIPs of The Convenience Tour—Fall 2022.”

 

Review

Clerks III, screenplay and 2022 film, made me laugh a lot and (almost) cry just as much—the latter, in an ultimately great way, because it meant that not only had Smith penned and directed one of his best films, maturity-wise, but he created a oeuvre- and mortality-acknowledging work that flows in a natural-feel pace, showing you can have characterization, humor and heart in equal, effective measure, one that doesn’t feel like it was a written in genre-unbalanced, ham-fisted and talking down to the audience manner. This is how you do it right, sans sappy b.s. scoring, too-cute puppies and players, while throwing in some Star Wars, rude humor and playful takes on religion.

If you like Smith’s overall Clerks and/or Jay and Silent Bob franchises, chances are you’ll find something to like about Clerk III, even if you’re put out by its underlying seriousness. Great work, worth owning.

Shards of Space by Robert Sheckley

 

(pb; 1962: science fiction story anthology)

 

Overall review

The stories in Shards range from excellent (“The Slow Season,” “Alone at Last”) to solid and entertaining (“Fool’s Mate,” “Subsistence Level”), showing Sheckley to an overall superb, timeless-in-his-themes-and-situations author, making this classic (in the best possible way) anthology one worth purchasing, and Sheckley a writer worth looking out for.

 

Review, story by story

“Prospector’s Special”: In Venus’s Scorpion Desert, a goldenstone miner (Morrison), seeking his fortune for himself and his wife—he hopes to buy and run an “ocean farm” with dolphins as well-treated employees—tracks a red and purple vein of goldenstone, hoping to achieve the titular special. As disasters pile up on him, he keeps on, despite others, via “’port” and phone, encouraging him to give up and return to civilization.

 

This is an excellent, humor-limned, offbeat and often surprising ticking-clock/relentlessly intense tale; it emotionally hooked me, had me rooting for Morrison as the story progressed. “Prospector’s” end is fun, bringing to the fore the humor previously took a backseat to the increasingly dire situation. Memorable, superb.

 

“The Girls and Nugent Miller”: A post-nuclear war man (Miller) unexpectedly encounters something he hasn’t seen the since the start of humanity’s wipeout: a group of living people, women! Unfortunately for the bull-headed Miller, they’re fierce, feminist females. Solid story, with a chilling, too-timely ending.

 

“Meeting of the Minds”: On “the island of Vuanu, southernmost of the Solomons, almost in the Louisade Archipelago,” a team of Spanish galleon treasure hunters attempt to fend off a Martian bug (a Quedak) intent on sharing a global mind-meld with them. Good, weird-situation story with a fun alien and a solid, relatively happy wrap-up.

 

“Potential”: An amnesiac wakes up alone on a seriously damaged spaceship flying through space. Why can’t he remember anything? And what is this mysterious mission that has the pre-programmed ship planet-hopping, searching for other humanoid life?

 

Fast-paced, tightly edited tale, this, with its well-timed reveals and disturbing, interesting ideas and finish.

 

“Fool’s Mate”: A long-standing stalemate between two warring enemies is broken, when the Earth-based humans’ President’s Executive (Richard Ellsner) decides to abandon the Configuration-Probability-Calculator’s [CPC] projected, chess-minded potential casualty reports, the reason for the stalemate: both sides are using the same reports. Solid, interesting story, with familiar but effective twist-of-sorts.

 

“Subsistence Level”: Solid story about a “pioneering” couple, Amelie and Dirk Bogren, move to a planetoid on the outskirts of society, largely due to Dirk’s restless nature and dislike of crowds, only to see their rough-life home become a popular destination.

 

“The Slow Season”: A financially struggling dressmaker (Slobod) is hired to sew dresses with inhuman, wildly varied measurements by a cryptic customer (Mr. Bellis). Succinct, excellent Twilight Zone-esque work, with a memorable story and ending. This is one of the best stories I’ve read in recent years.

 

“Alone at Last”: Another gem of a Twilight Zone-esque tale, this, where a man (Arwell), seeking near-absolute solitude, embarks on a journey toward a “dangerous” destination. It’s not difficult to see where “Alone” is headed but its specific details and tonal-shift finish make this super-short story stunning, excellent.

 

“Forever”: A scientist with a world-changing serum is hunted by menacing, metropolitan strangers while heading to a patent office to register his scientific discovery. Fun, smart, quirky adventure-work.

 

“The Sweeper of Loray”: Grim, sad tale about two astronauts (Professor Carver and his assistant, Fred)—opportunistic and imperialistic in their respective missions—studying and hoping to steal a “universal panacea” from peaceful, tribal aliens (the Lorayans), who don’t want to give it to them. Well-written, one of the darkest entries in this anthology.

 

“The Special Exhibit”: A mild-mannered ornithologist (Mr. Grant) shows his wife “of such heroic proportions and meager mentality” (Mrs. Grant) a scientific exhibit-experiment exclusively reserved for the happiness of museum employees and specialists. While it’s easy to spot where it’s likely going, “Special” is an immensely satisfying, darkly cheerful and waste-no-words work about coupledom and “a far more effective problem solver than marriage counseling.” Above-average, Twilight Zone-esque.

Hosts by F. Paul Wilson

 

(pb; 2001: fifth book in the Repairman Jack series)

 

From the back cover

“Hosts starts with a bang when Jack has to stop a psychotic shooting rampage on a subway car—but there are witnesses, and Jack’s essential anonymity is threatened.

“A good deal more is threatened when the lover of Jack’s sister Kate survives a brain tumor, thanks to an experimental treatment, only to join a strange cult called ‘The Unity.” Now Jack must face a new kind of enemy a virally based group mind that wants to take over him and the world.”

 

Review

Everything is dialed up to the highest volume in Wilson’s fifth Repairman Jack work, Hosts. While explicitly setting the stage for Jack’s crossover/return into the Adversary/Nightworld series in Nightworld (1992), Hosts introduces readers to Kate Iverson, Jack’s long-unseen sister, whose friend (Jeanette Vega) has joined a doomsday cult, one that might have its roots in Jack’s recent past—and Glenn/Glaeken/Mr. Veilleur's. (Glaeken/Veilleur appeared in Wilson’s The Keep, 1981, and Reprisal,1992.)

Jack and Veilleur/Glaeken aren’t the only familiar faces. Darkly humorous and weapons salesman Abe Grossman is also back, with others in the mix (e.g. arsonists Joe and Stan Kozlowski, minor villains in a previous Repairman Jack novel, I forget which one), getting thoroughly explored as fully fleshed characters, sometimes to Hosts’s detriment. Fans of Sal Roma/Rasalom/M Saralo—that latter name new for that evil force, first seen in The Keep—is not explicitly shown in Hosts but his works and influence overshadow everything in Jack’s world, something he’s starting to realize.

As with earlier Adversary/Nightworld/Repairman Jack books, Hosts is a wild ride but in blowing up everything to maximalist drama and supernatural/action-oriented fireworks, Wilson bloats it into overwriting, which works sometimes here, and at other times made me wish the novel was over already (especially near the end—still curious about who the old Russian lady, Jack’s “mother,” is though.

Hosts is still an excellent read despite Wilson’s penchant for overwriting. Not sure I’m going to read the next Repairman Jack novels, but I will likely cut to Nightworld, which is said to bring everything from the Adversary/Jack novels to the Adversary side of things. The Haunted Air (2002) is the next Repairman Jack novel.

Note for the possibly confused: Wilson wrote a lot of these novels out of chronological order.

The Second Hammer Horror Film Omnibus by John Burke

(pb; 1967: movie tie-in/novella collection)

 

From the back cover

“The Reptile

“From the steaming jungles of Borneo to a remote Cornish village came the fiendish curse that turned a lovely young girl into a nameless horror.

 

“Dracula – Prince of Darkness

“Blood mingles with the ashes and so becomes a life-giving force to the evil desires of a Vampire.

 

“Rasputin – The Mad Monk

“Hypnotist, seducer, libertine and drunkard—he ruled the Tsar’s court like a devil incarnate.

 

“The Plague of the Zombies

“Infamous Voodoo ritual casts its barbarous shadow over a village of ‘the undead.’”

 

Overall review

Like its predecessor anthology, Second Hammer is worth owning and reading, with three of the four based-on-screenplay novellas providing for excellent chills; the outlier tale, “Rasputin—The Mad Monk,” is entertaining, vastly improved by Burke’s writing (as is “The Reptile”) but “Rasputin” feels thin when compared to the others.

This slices of Gothic fun and terror book is out of print as far as I know of, so if you’re curious about it and see it for what you consider a reasonable price (do your research), pick it up! You can always sell it to someone who (may) love it more than you.

 

Review, novella by novella

The Reptile: Set in summer 1902 in “the village of Clagmoor in Cornwall, England, known as Larkrise,” a London couple (Harry and Valerie Spaulding) honeymoon in the rustic cottage Harry inherited from his recently dead brother (Charles Edward Spaulding), who died of a mysterious “heart attack.”

Once in Clagmoor, the newly married Spauldings encounter hostility, passive and aggressive, from most of the natives. One of them, inn keeper Tom Bailey, helps them when he can—whilst treading carefully so as to not offend his fellow, longtime patrons. Then there’s quietly hostile, emotionally strained Doctor Franklyn, a theologian, seemingly abusive father of the “lovely” Anna, both of whom are hiding a deadly secret. Will the Spauldings, with aid from Bailey, find out what’s going on with the strange silence surrounding the plague of “heart attacks” which seem to strike those around the Franklyns?

Like Burke’s four adaptations in The Hammer Horror Omnibus (1966), “Reptile” is an entertaining, waste-no-words and creepy-atmospheric tale, with quick-sketch-but-effective characterization and fast-moving action. In the case of “Reptile,” this is a vast improvement on its overlong, thin-story-stretched-to-feature-length film; at best, it was an hourlong short. Good read, especially for those familiar with the film version, or looking for a quick-read Hammer Films Ltd. Fix.

The cinematic counterpart of the same name debuted in England in February 1966; it was released stateside on April 6, 1966. The film was directed by John Gilling, from a screenplay by producer Anthony Hinds.

 

“Dracula – Prince of Darkness”: Charles and Diana Kent, a married couple, are traveling through the Carpathian mountains with Charles’s more conservative brother (Alan) and his shrew of a spouse (Helen) when ill luck befalls them and they find themselves stranded near a castle that not only offers shelter from the relentless rain and the dark forest but—dare they hope?—a telephone. Making them further uneasy is the fact that earlier a local, friendlier-than-other-villagers priest (Shandor) warned them not to go anywhere near the castle but didn’t tell them why.

They quickly find out why they were warned away but it’s too late, as Klove (the unsettling keeper of said castle) reveals himself to be in the service of another, who’s been dead for ten years: Dracula.

Burke again keeps the characters and their (mis)fortunes fast-paced, bloody, Gothic and bold (spectacle-wise) in the way that the best Hammer films are. This eighty-five-page pulp adventure is a febrile and delectable ride with vivid descriptions that thrill (e.g., “. . . making a last appeal to a thousand guardian demons”) and titillate in equal proportion. Excellent adaptation of its source 1966 film, which is also a blast, if I remember right (I haven’t seen it in a few years).

The film version, originally titled Dracula, Prince of Darkness was helmed by Terence Fisher, scripted by Jimmy Sangster and producer Anthony Hinds. It was released in Britain in January 1966.

 

“Rasputin—The Mad Monk”: Set in the early twentieth century (about 1916, the year the real-life Grigori Rasputin was killed), this mix of historical fact and mostly fiction, “Rasputin” is thinly plotted, character-study-intense story, with the titular odious and greedy hypnotist grifter worming his way into the Tsarina’s St. Petersburg court with help from a “struck off the medical register,” sometimes reluctant Dr. Boris Zargo.

Others, including everyman Peter Vassilievitch, set out to stop the lascivious, wily con artist. Can they stop him before he makes everyone around him his puppet, slaves to his seemingly inexhaustible desires?

Burke’s pulpy and tightly edited writing elevates this thinly plotted, eighty-four-page story into something worth reading (can’t comment on its 1966 source film iteration; I haven’t seen it in decades). Solid, good read, this.

Don Sharp directed “Rasputin”’s film version. Producer Anthony Hinds wrote the screenplay. It was released in Britain on February 20,1966.

 

“The Plague of the Zombies”: Religion (Haitian voodoo), capitalism, romance, their resulting zombies, and death come together in this (again) tautly penned Gothic-in-a-Cornish-village story, solid in its themes, content and overall delivery. This entertaining, fast-moving and excellent different take on zombies is a great, short-ish (eighty-two pages long) tale, worth owning and reading. I don’t remember the film which I haven’t seen in a while, but I seem to remember thinking this is one of the better non-classic monsters horror films Hammer put out.

Directed by John Gilling, “Plague”’s cinematic counterpart received a wide release in Britain on January 9, 1966. Peter Bryan wrote its screenplay.

You Always Try to Kill Me in Your Dreams by Carlton Mellick III

 

(pb; 2023)

From the back cover

“Dreams shouldn’t kill you. If you die in a dream you should be fine in real life. But that’s not what Elias [Thompson] learns once he moves in with a girl named Roe who has the terrible habit of pulling people into her dreams with her whenever she falls asleep. Although she’s the nicest, coolest, most attractive woman Elias has ever known while she’s awake. Roe is a complete psychopath in her dreams. She will stop at nothing to kill anyone who finds their way into her subconscious worlds. But Elias has no choice but to survive her crazy dreams every night if he ever hopes to make it in a world that has been torn apart by a global pandemic and economic collapse.”

 

Review

Always, a relatively light entry in Mellick’s oeuvre, is pure delight, poking fun at Portland, Oregon, the author’s current city-of-residence while marking the social anxiety of the recent COVID-19 outbreak as well as the uncertainties, cruelty and fickleness of collegiate youth.

The characters are deftly sketched out, fleshed enough to ring as relatable and true, while the fast-moving, often funny and sometimes gory story, with its well-placed (and often quiet) twists redirecting the plot/action into new, distinctly Mellick territory, darkly hilarious with underlying seriousness and a multilayered, disturbing-or-comforting finish, depending on your mood. This is a great read if you’re looking to read a lighter-in-tone, later Mellick work, one of my favorite novellas by him.

Alien: Covenant -- Origins by Alan Dean Foster

 

(pb; 2017: book-only prequel to Alan Dean Foster’s 2017 movie tie-in novelization of Alien: Covenant)

 

From the back cover

“The Covenant mission is the most ambitious endeavor in the history of Weyland-Yutani. A ship bound for Origae-6, carrying two thousand colonists beyond the limits of known space, this is a make-or-break investment for the corporation—and for the future of mankind.

“Yet there are those who would die to stop the mission. As the colony ship hovers in Earth orbit, several violent events reveal a deadly conspiracy to sabotage the launch. While Captain Jacob Branson and his wife Daniels complete their preparations, security chief Daniel Lupé recruits the final key member of his team. Together they seek to stop the perpetrators before the ship and its passengers.

Review

This official prequel to the events of Alien: Covenant (2017; director: Ridley Scott) is a well-written but superfluous, fill-in-all-the-timeline-blanks work. Foster, a consistently solid-to-great author, penned a solid novella-length story with solid characters—a few of whom appear in Scott’s Alien: Covenant, e.g., Daniels, Tennessee and Lupé. Unfortunately, Covenant—Origins isn’t a novella, it’s a novel, with a story that feels lightweight, character and event-wise, compared to the bigger-in-scope Alien works, an entertaining but overlong trifle in a series studded with some excellent entries, cinema and book-wise.

I’d recommend Covenant—Origins if you’re a die-hard/completist fan of the Alien franchise, looking for story- and character expansions you won’t get in the films and other books. This is a worthwhile read, if you’re of those mindsets and keep your expectations of Covenant—Origin’s stakes relatively low, and enjoy sporadic bits of gunplay/action, corporate intrigue, roughshod revolutionaries (the Earthsavers), and don’t expect a lot of monsters (besides those clawed shadow-things in Duncan’s apoplectic nightmares).

All the Rage by F. Paul Wilson

 

(pb; 2000: fourth book in the Repairman Jack series)

From the back cover

“Can you imagine a new chemical compound, a non-addictive designer drug that heightens your assertiveness, opens the door to your primal self, giving you an edge wherever you compete, whether on the street or the football field, in a classroom or a boardroom? Wouldn’t you be tempted to try it. . . just once? What happens if it releases the uncontrollable rage and makes you a killer?”

 

Review

Wilson’s Rage is full-on-screenplay/nothing-left-to-the-imagination ambitious, a mostly excellent novel with its thoroughly explored characters (some annoying, e.g., the often shrill/emotional-flip-out Gia), memorably wild and well-foreshadowed situations, and story-centric callbacks to earlier Repairman Jack books. Fans of H.G. Wells’s 1896 novel The Island of Dr. Moreau (or at least three of its cinematic adaptations) may especially enjoy Rage, which often references Jack’s fondness for it.

If I have any nits about Rage, it’s that some of its near-the-end scenes run a bit longer than necessary (almost to the point of ridiculousness, character motivation-wise) or the characters do or say dumb things. But this is a minor complaint for an otherwise superb work, one worth reading and owning, despite its several overlong end-chapters. Followed by Hosts (2001).

The Green Ripper by John D. MacDonald

 

(pb; 1979: eighteenth book in MacDonald’s twenty-one-book Travis McGee series)

 

From the back cover

“It was a new kind of game for Travis McGee.

“It was called love. . .

“In another season there were girls of summer, robust and playful in their sandy ways, and now here were the winter ones, with cool surmise in the tended eye, fragrant and speculative, strolling and sailing and tanning, making their night music and night scent. And then there was Gretel.

“Gretel had discovered the key to me—all of me. And suddenly I had something to hope for.

“Then terribly, unexpectedly she was dead. From a mysterious illness, they told me. But I knew they were lying. Gretel had been murdered. And now I was out for blood.”

 

Review

Narrated by series protagonist and “salvage consultant” Travis McGee in first-person past-tense, this entertaining, often conversational-toned and sometimes dark mystery/thriller is a blast-through read, with well-developed characters (even if you’re new to the Travis McGee series like me), cut-to-it pacing and overall excellence, its death cultic villains (the military-minded members of the “Church of Apocrypha”) worth hissing at whilst indicating a larger, more ominous threat, should McGee fail in his quest to avenge the needless killing of his beloved girlfriend, Gretel Howard. Green does a great job of setting up this umbrella, moneyed threat for future McGee novels (something I hope MacDonald delivered on with later McGee entries).

Worth owning and a standout (in a good way) beach read—especially in southeastern Florida, where McGee often lives—Green was followed by Free Fall in Crimson.

Black Orchids by Rex Stout

 

(pb; 1941, 1942: ninth book in Stout’s Nero Wolfe series)

 

From the back cover

“The incredibly brilliant Nero Wolfe is the orchid-growing gourmet whose sheer genius at deduction is without peer. Together with his confidential assistant, Archie Goodwin, he must utilize his vast resources to solve two cases that concern something perhaps too close to his heart—orchids. Black orchids. Never has the big man been matched against a mystery so curious—or fragrantly deadly.”

 

Review

In “Black Orchids,” a wildly clever and deadly shooting at a New York City Flower Show compels Wolfe and his reliable, sarcastic “confidential assistant” (Archie Goodwin, who narrates Wolfe’s mystery-solving adventures) to suss out who set up the public death of a scoundrel (Harry Gould).

In “Cordially Invited to Meet Death,” a young woman (Bess Hiddleton) who’s receiving threatening letters turns up dead, her ending borne of tetanus—a seeming, strange accident (to some) that sets off Wolfe and Goodwin’s crime-solving alarm bells.

“Black” shows how Wolfe gains six rare, black orchids that he badly wants whilst solving a well thought-out killing, with a consistently randy Goodwin flirting with the ladies, often while doing Wolfe’s sarcastically commented-upon bidding.

“Cordially” is a bit racier in parts (a woman, with good reason, is accidentally seen sans clothing—with nary a description, for those who are concerned about that sort of thing), with an ending that speaks to, hints at Wolfe’s rarely seen tender side, keeping with the tone of these two consistent-with-the-series clever and fast-paced tales.

Black, structurally, is a great anthological offset to the novels that came before it, its use/linking of black orchids excellent, in a character-expanding, tonally true way. Great read, worth owning. Followed by Not Quite Dead Enough (1944).

The Scarlatti Inheritance by Robert Ludlum

 

(pb; 1971)

 

From the back cover

“Her weapons: money and power. Her target: the most dangerous man in the world—her own son. Elizabeth Wyckham Scarlatti has a plan, a desperate last-minute gamble designed to save the world from her son, Ulster, an incalculably cruel man who is working for the Third Reich under the name of Heinrich Kroeger. If Elizabeth cannot stop him, Ulster will give Hitler the most powerful instrument on earth.”

 

 

Review

Scarlatti is equal parts accounting reports and Ludlum’s trademark (sometimes emotional) character-based action, an entertaining, clever, element- and character-balanced conspiratorial ride set in the time just before World War II. Scarlatti is also a stylistic and trademark offset tale from Ludlum’s other more action-heavy novels, e.g., Ludlum’s Bourne trilogy. Worth owning, this.