Musings from Brian J. Noggle

I saw the Dean Martin Matt Helm movies before I found this book at a book fair, cheap, so I didn’t know whether to expect the Austin Powers tone in the novel. It’s more of a straightforward paperback thriller: Matt Helm, counteragent, finds himself framed as a traitor, so he runs south to Mexico with the wife of a tycoon. Her brother was a copatriot of Matt’s, and he was killed when captured during the frame-up. There, Helm finds details about their mission that was about to start before the frame-up takes place: kill an assassin who has his eyes on a revolutionary Mexican general.

Helm relies on assistance from a Mexican colonel he trusts from a previous mission, but too many people are shooting at Helm for his comfort or for his trust.

The voice is a bit wordy, probably looking for a certain braggadocio in the character. The pacing a bit slow, and the first person narrator keeps things a little close to chest. The plot itself is a little too clever for its own good and relies on a bit of Helm making cognitive leaps that I wouldn’t have seen coming. The result is a second tier paperback thriller, way below John D. MacDonald’s work, but good enough for some throwaway time.

Apparently, Helm has a legion of fans; perhaps the earlier books in the series are better.

With the cover of this novel, it’s easy to assume it’s one of the 87th Precinct novels. Of course, it doesn’t actually say that, but it’s easy to make that mistake, which I’m sure the publisher helped along with the cover matching the mid-80s 87th Precinct novels. I didn’t realize it until all of a sudden they were actually in New York.

This book deals with Bryan Reardon, a detective in the 5th Precinct, and the rest of the 5th squad as they deal with one of the infrequent murders in their precinct. Reardon also has to deal with a divorce in process that he’s not in favor of and a new romance, maybe, with a researcher for Forbes. So a restaurant owner gets whacked while Mob guys watch, but it looks to be a result of some financial shenanigans and perhaps a touch of geopolitics as an Arab got whacked at LaGuardia by the same perps.

The mid-80s novels set in New York are very, very bleak in their outlook on the safety in the city. Definitely progressed toward that Escape from New York future. Then a certain mayor came to lead the city and turn it around in the 1990s. Wow, if that mayor was running for president, he’d definitely be my Plan B. Fortunately, Ed McBain isn’t around to see me linking up his books to politics with which he (McBain) would probably disagree.

So it’s a one-off as far as series go, but it’s classic McBain and worth a read.

Hey, sometimes you’re in the mood for a Hardy Boys book, and if that’s the case, don’t make the same mistake I’ve obviously done.

Just kidding. I read Tess of the d’Urbervilles in college and saw The Marriage of Bette & Boo that same year, so one has to wonder why I didn’t become a total Thomas Hardy head. Except that it’s Victorian literature, and I’m a contemporary American, more Hemingway than Faulkner much less Victorian.

Still, when this book was remaindered from the Bridgeton Trails branch of the library, I couldn’t pass it up (I also got A Pair of Blue Eyes). It’s a fair enough into to Hardy, as it’s only a hair over 200 pages. It tells the story of a young man named Dick Dewy and the new school mistress Fancy Day. It comprises a fairly short number of scenes, some of which are less important to the forward progress of the story than their overall length would suggest. However, like with any serious novel and any old novel, you have to read it for the joy of the language and the archaism of the world it depicts.

Is it a good Victorian novel? Heck if I know; I haven’t read enough bad Victorian novels to know the difference. But I know a little more about the time period in which organs replaced quires in the Anglican church and a little more about Thomas Hardy’s work, so it was worth the quarter. Also, I’ve read more Hardy than you have now (probably), so feel my arrogance. Go ahead, put your hand right here on the monitor -> X <- Feel it?

In March, I read Ringworld’s Children, but that book did not mar my longstanding default view of Larry Niven’s work enough that I didn’t pick Oath of Fealty right away.

The book centers on a collision between the city of Los Angeles and an “arcology”–a large, mostly self-contained living structure housing hundreds of thousands of people with its own government, economy, and security. A humanist terrorist group wants to destroy “The Hive,” so they send some young people on a dry run with only mock weapons. The security force of Todos Santos responds with deadly force, leading a showdown with the political and law enforcement forces of the city that surrounds it.

The book presents a lot of thought-provoking themes, such as a contrast of the way of life for regular city dwellers who live freely and the residents of Todos Santos, who accept certain security measures–the omnipresence of cameras, for example–to make living together in a confined area possible. Todos Santos, aside from the cameras, offers many amenities and philosophies–police are again peace officers, the government does not regulate business and in fact offers loans on good terms, and the citizens are not citizens, they’re also shareholders in the corporation that runs Todos Santos.

It’s got a bit of the political going on and a large cast of characters, but because it’s not built on a number of books preceding it (as Ringworld’s Children was), these flaws are forgiveable and aren’t so dramatic; one only has to pause to sort out who the character is, not try futilely to remember who the character was from a book one read a decade ago).

Written with Jerry Pournelle and published in 1981, this book precedes the Reagan era and comes out of the 1970s milieu, but it doesn’t seem dated. One of the characters carries a communicator/calendar/portable computer that, unfortunately, he has to plug in. Sounds familiar enough 26 years later. Unfortunately, the characters do describe a large set of computer files (27,000,000 bytes) that will take a long time to download at 300 baud. True, but I was downloading faster than that a mere five years after the book was written.

So it’s a good book, and I’d recommend it. Especially if you can snag a cheap copy like I did.

For those of you keeping track at home, this is my 38th book of the year, so I am on a good pace to reach my annual goal of 75.