Month: March 2025

This is one of John D. MacDonald’s science fantasy books–The Ballroom of the Skies being the other, which I just read almost 20 years ago. I just picked this book up ten years ago, and I’ve been kind of pacing myself on new (to me) MacDonald books because one day I will run out. Although there are so many, and I’ve paced them out so, that I can probably re-read them.

So: On Earth, a brilliant scientist is working on a discredited project for interstellar travel that the military wants to kill. A technician, in a moment of “madness,” damages the project, but Bard, the project leader, wants him back. The team is monitored by a psychologist for signs of this madness, this loss of control. Meanwhile, a dissipated and dying race on another planet has forgotten its history and only lives to play and to “dream” in special machines that show them worlds that they think don’t exist where they can play violent and destructive games. An outcast of this race who has gone to forbidden levels of the world, a large building on a desolate planet, to learn, and he wonders if the worlds and the people are real–and he hopes to establish contact with the scientist and to help him to reach their planet–or to take one of the remaining rockets on his planet to visit Earth.

So it’s very close thematically to Ballroom of the Skies in that psi-aliens are responsible for the burgeoning violence on the planet. In both cases, Fawcett reprinted some of MacDonald’s earliest works given his later success, particularly with the Travis McGee series. It’s early in his career–and with a bit more imagination, perhaps he would have become a successful science fiction writer rather than crime fiction. But this book is a little uneven–it tackles bureaucracy well, but it flags in the middle and limps to a happy ending. Maybe that’s characteristic of MacDonald’s early work, the interesting setup, a tailed-off middle, and an abrupt end–I seem to remember thinking that about some of his other early paperback originals–the checklist in the book report for John D. MacDonald: A Checklist of Collectible Editions & Translations links to my book reports on some of his work from the 1950s, and it does seem to be the case that he’s still finding his footing and his formula that will be successful in the 1960s and beyond.

So definitely a book for a MacDonald fan. But for a general science fiction fan: you could probably do better. And worse, as the book reports on this blog indicate: paperback original science fiction from the mid-century period was a mixed bag.

So I got this book in a roundabout fashion: As part of the stocking stuffers for Christmas 2023, I bought the family Barnes and Noble gift cards, which I failed to stuff in their stockings in 2023 (they were full enough anyway), so I put them in the stockings for Christmas 2024 (where the stockings were less stuffed, so the deferred giving worked out better than it might have). My beautiful wife knew that this book was coming out this year (although the copyright date is 2024, it was not in book stores until February 2025). She read it right away–ah, gentle reader, I remember a time when I would buy a book by an author the day it came out and read it that night, but we are too far in the 21st century for me to do that much any more. After she read it, she put it into my office, and I put it in my unread stacks until after the 2025 Winter Reading Challenge. And, amazingly, I found it again shortly thereafter, so I picked it up.

This is an Elvis Cole / Joe Pike novel–it seems that Crais has abandoned writing other non-series books–and it’s definitely a throwback to late 20th century suspense writing. The style balances paragraphs of decription with dialog, which means good pacing with actual description in it and not just a script in a hardback. It’s almost 400 pages, but it doesn’t feel like it.

So, the plot: A young woman famous and rich from her online baking videos and growing media and baking empire contacts Elvis Cole to look for her father who disappeared ten years ago. He was declared dead after five years missing and a search by an investigation firm that Cole knows and respects. So he starts his investigation and discovers that someone in Rancha, the last place the father was seen, doesn’t want him investigating. Which leads to a brutal beatdown of Cole by multiple attackers (when he doesn’t give up) which allows multiple characters to say, “It looks like you got your ass kicked,” which was probably funnier to the author when he was writing the book than to me reading it.

The plot is a little convoluted–well, no more so than a Raymond Chandler book–and I don’t know that it hangs together seamlessly or without wrinkles–I thought a particular twist was coming which did not, and it ended up a little disappointing, but the execution and writing was refreshing enough that I’ll probably get the next Crais book for my wife right when it comes out, should another be forthcoming (it’s taking him several years to crank them out these days, so one of these will be the last, but hopefully not soon).

Which leads me to think maybe I should read all the Cole and then Cole/Pike books again. I’ve read Robert B. Parker’s early works several times, including some binge reads where I tore through all the works to a certain point in rapid succession, but that’s been twenty or twenty-five years–and I’m not especially inclined to do it again with the Spenser novels as they got longer and more hardback scripts having gained length but losing depth somewhere around that time. But Crais? I suspect I’d find they are pretty much quality throughout. But I have so many other books to read that I’m not eager to run through them again unless they accidentally end up on my to-read shelves again.

So: Recommended.

And I would be remiss if I did not mention that I own two copies of what might be Crais’s first published work–which is not The Monkey’s Raincoat. Which was expensive in paperback when we tried to find it twenty years ago.

This book is undated and looks to be self-published, probably something for the gift shop in Smirnoff’s theater in Branson. I could date it pretty closely by its topic matter: Several Enron jokes, but no mention of the September 11 attacks. I went to the Amazon listing for the book, and it says 2000, which is what I would have guessed. Closer to when I met him in 2012 than that meeting is to today, gentle reader, and meaning it’s been fifteen and a half years since I read America on Six Rubles a Day, and only eight months since I bought this signed copy in Clever last year. I just sort of presumed I had a lot of Yakov Smirnoff books on my shelves, but I guess there are not that many titles available. I just see a lot of them because they’re pretty common in these parts.

At any rate, it’s a collection of short topical bits about, well, life and living in this country and whatnot. Fairly basic humor stuff. A little biography worked in here and there, some of his story of coming to America and coming to Branson. A little about the philosophy that would lead him to becoming Doctor Smirnoff later and his philosophy of happiness and love.

So I guess I could have picked this book up for the Feels Good category of the 2025 Winter Reading Challenge, but I did not. But it was close to Hope Always Wins, so I picked it up shortly thereafter.

And I guess my shelves are not rife with Smirnoff, which is a shame. I’m old enough to remember his 80s schtick which gives him a head start in appreciation. I should really get down to one of his shows again before he does retire for good this time.