The Big Brain #1: The Aardvark Affair by Gary Brandner

 

(pb; 1975: first book in The Big Brain trilogy)

From the back cover

“Before his birth, even before his conception, everything about Colin Garrett’s life was planned with a single goal in mind: to produce a genius child. The plan was so successful that the standard tests for intelligence did not measure high enough to rate Colin on their scales.

“But one thing the brain wasn’t smart enough to do was keep his mind power hidden from the Army.

“When serious trouble erupts at Aardvark, Colonel Jefferson (J.J.) Juddd makes it his business to start the brain working again for the highest-level espionage operation ever conceived—Agency Zero.

 

“Judd tells Garrett that Aardvark is a soil reclamation project, testing ultrasonics and laser light to change the molecular structure of barren soil. And there people have become mental vegetables in the course of that testing.

“But you can’t keep a secret from a man with X-ray intelligence. Garrett knows one of those three is faking.”

 

Review

This 189-page “men’s adventure” book, the first in Brandner’s The Big Brain trilogy, is a fun, tightly penned, action-punctuated and oh-so-masculine spy-ish thriller where the titular, ultra-smart character (Colin Garrett) and his muscular partner-in-espionage, Beverley “Beano” Rocker, set out to discover who’s responsible for the sabotage of a top-secret government program (Aardvark). Their spiraling investigation takes them to (for them) unexpected places, with inevitable and well-placed, effective twists, and a solemn finish. While there are few surprises for genre-familiar readers in Aardvark, it’s an above-average thriller from the author of The Howling trilogy. Fans of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Ian Fleming’s James Bond series might especially enjoy Aardvark.

Aardvark is followed by The Big Brain #2: The Beezlebub Business.

Tomie by Junji Ito

 

(hb; 1987-2001 manga series, collected into the above-shown 2016 omnibus edition)

 

From the back cover

“Tomie is the girl you wish you could forget. She’s the one you shouldn’t have touched, shouldn’t have smiled at, shouldn’t have made mad. She’s oh so lovely—but you just might love her to death.”

 

Review

Ito’s first mega-successful manga series about a seemingly immortal and invincible girl you can’t kill is an unsettling, bold and often horrific work, about a bedazzling girl who seems nice for two seconds before her selfish demon side begins ruining her victims—usually anybody within her gaze and memory. While the structure of these episodic, expanding tales are essentially the same, it’s fun and interesting to see Ito’s early, emerging style and structuring (which lent itself to later, greater works) as well as the playful creativity of the myriad of ways that Tomie gets at her victims, often through initially innocuous ways. And of course the artwork is great.

Tomie has inspired nine live-action films (starting with Tomie, 1998), at least one Japanese series and scores of other directly linked multimedia/crossover works. Worth checking out, this.

The Magician's Wife by James M. Cain

 

The Magician’s Wife by James M. Cain

(pb;1965)

From the back cover

“CLAY LOCKWOOD.

“He was a powerful business executive with a brilliant career ahead of him—until he met Sally.

 

“SALLY ALEXIS.

“She was a magician’s beautiful wife, but it was her own sensuous magic that drew Clay to what he knew would mean trouble.

 

“GRACE SIMONE.

“Clay was her idea of everything a man should be—and she didn’t intend to share Clay with Sally.”

 

Review

Fans of Cain’s heady brew of firebrand men and women, lust, suspense and murder are likely to enjoy wholesale-meat salesman (and manly man) Clay Lockwood’s dizzying, quick-twists journey down a rabbit hole of character-based success, desire and death (in this case the latter is likely to be Alec Gorsuch, aka the Great Alexis, husband of Sally, one of Lockwood’s lovers). Like much of Cain’s other headlong-into-trouble works, this one is chatty at times (though it doesn’t feel like filler), with a variety of engaging characters—some of them honest, like Edith “Buster” Conlon, a feisty, friendly stripper, and her lawyer (and Lockwood’s friend), Nat Pender! For me, though, the standout character is the savvy, patient Grace Simone, Sally’s mother, who isn’t out to get her daughter, but won’t let Sally get in the way of what she wants. The ending has its own stark brand of honesty and personal responsibility, admirable in a weird and dangerous way. Entertaining, good read by a great genre author, one worth seeking out and settling into for an afternoon or two.