(pb; 1975: second book in The Big Brain trilogy)
From the back cover
“What good is a billion-dollar brain when there’s the devil to pay?
“It’s hell on earth for Colin
Garrett—the Big Brain—when an assignment to investigate the President’s chief
advisor on forgeign affairs leads him to the Beezlebub Club. The elite club is
a haven of sex and Satanism for Senators and other Washington headliners: it
may also be afront for undesirable political activists. Garrett’s Big Brain
usually functions faster than a computer, allowing him to probe men’s minds and
read their thoughts. But now a deadly, impenetrable mind shield, wielded by
Beezlebub, has Garrett almost helpless in a masterful duel of brain waves.
Because if just one circuit shorts, it will blow out the Big Brain forever!”
Review
The second Big Brain novel finds Colin Garrett and his Agency Zero boss (General Jefferson “J.J.” Judd) investigating Alec Danneman, friend and close advisor to the current US President—it seems that Danneman has been become secretive with his colleagues, his actions made more suspicious by the fact that Danneman is set to engage in important international negotiations with Chinese government officials (among them Chung Tao-Lin, head of the Chinese intelligence agency).
Garrett’s job becomes more complicated when Judd’s friend, Darrell York, member of Executive Committee of Foreign Affairs board, is publicly stabbed to death; York was the one who gave Judd the heads-up on Danneman. Another violent death, possibly connected to York’s killing, widens the scope of the investigation, bringing two others into Garrett’s orbit: Norman Schuyler, husband of the recently deceased Bebe Schuyler; and Liona Wolfe, a satanic dominatrix linked to the notorious Beezlebub Club (which Danneman recently visited).
Fortunately for Garrett, Beezlebub‘s Garrett Woman (think “Bond Girl”) is Trudie McKenzie, a smart, sometimes girly, Washington D.C. guide who provides more than transportation help to the titular cerebral spy-detective.
One curious character, briefly mentioned as a “friend” of Judd’s, is Dr. Arnold Tesla. Arnold’s name is close to Bela Lugosi’s character, Dr. Armand Tesla, in the 1943 Lew Landers film The Return of the Vampire. Not sure if it’s a coincidence, or why it might be a cinematic-to-pulp in-joke, but given Brandner’s genre-smart pulp sensibilities, it perked my interest.
As with the first novel (The Aardvark Affair), Beezlebub’s writing is fast-paced, tightly edited and bluntly male-gaze in its language, with its casual-womanizer Garrett deftly, sometimes violently and carnally adapting to its corkscrew events and lots-of-suspects characters. (The two sex scenes are explicit enough to make the sexually shy blush, but fall short of being completely X-rated.) The killer (or killers) isn’t too hard to figure out, but it’s an entertaining action-flick, short-read trashy novel by an excellent, having-fun author. Worth reading, this. Followed by The Big Brain #3: Energy Zero.
