FFB Review: "Bimbos Of The Death Sun" by Sharyn McCrumb-- Reviewed By Barry Ergang

Friday means Friday’s Forgotten Books. Barry kicks off things today with his review of Bimbos Of The Death Sun by Sharyn McCrumb. After you read the review make sure you check out Patti’s blog and check out other possibilities…

BIMBOS OF THE DEATH SUN (1988) by Sharyn McCrumb

Reviewed by Barry Ergang

Winner of the 1988 Edgar Award for Best Original Paperback Mystery, Bimbos of the Death Sun is anything but conventional—despite its setting being a convention. Specifically the science fiction/fantasy convention called Rubicon. Among those in attendance is Dr. James Owens Mega, professor of engineering and author (under the pseudonym Jay Omega) of Bimbos of the Death Sun, the hard science fiction novel he wrote to promulgate his “exercise in pure reason concerning the effects of sunspot activity…He had known that when Alien Books bought it, there would have to be some commercialization, but he hadn’t bargained on being heralded as the author of something called Bimbos of the Death Sun.” A first-time attendee, he is fortunate to be accompanied by his academic colleague and girlfriend Dr. Marion Farley, a professor of English who has taught courses in science fiction and fantasy; who knows the field and the fans—or fen, to use the plural in the enthusiasts’ argot—far better than he; and who knows from past experience how to navigate the alien terrain of this kind of convention.

The most prominent attendee, and the biggest draw for Rubicon fen, is author Appin Dungannon, creator of the novels starring “golden Viking warrior” Tratyn Runewind, a character as appealing as his creator is appalling: Dungannon scornful of and insulting to his avid readership. The majority of the fen are nonetheless tolerant and respectful of—often to the point of being idolatrous

—Dungannon’s behavior. This Rubicon, and any other convention, for that matter, will be the author’s last, because someone has decided to employ what Dungannon himself declares “an out-of-period weapon” and squeezes the trigger. Homicide Lieutenant Ayhan, who is frequently inclined to aver “I love this case” with increasingly frustrated  inflections, is the lead investigator, but it ultimately falls to Jay Omega, who must replace the late Appin Dungannon as Dungeon Master in a role-playing game, to solve the case.

Employing the omniscient viewpoint, Sharyn McCrumb does plenty of “head-hopping,” taking the reader into the minds of a multitude of characters in a novel that satirizes the fan mentality and the extremes to which some will go in their adoration of their favorite fictional heroes and heroines—think Trekkies, for example—as well as those who are into other kinds of sci-fi/fantasy activities: “Wargamers, Dungeon Masters, NASA freaks, comic book junkies, and other assorted fen, costumed and otherwise, sprawled in metal folding chairs facing the stage and waited for the pageantry to begin.” Some of the major characters are well-defined, but many of the lesser ones are dealt with so briefly I sometimes forgot who they and their roles in the story were.

There is also quite a bit of scene-hopping, and I suspect Ms. McCrumb resorted to this method as a structural device to give the reader a sense of the different kinds of things that might occur at this type of convention. Many of the aforementioned lesser characters appear in these scenes.

Mystery is subordinate to satire in this novel, and readers who come to Bimbos of the Death Sun wanting and expecting a traditional, formal detective story are going to be disappointed. Science fiction and fantasy readers will appreciate references to notable authors. Those who enjoy and appreciate a humorous take on a particular subculture will be rewarded with wry-toned literate prose, a lot of smiles, and possibly even a few out-loud chuckles. 

© 2015 Barry Ergang

Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s website is http://www.writetrack.yolasite.com/. You can find some of his written work at Amazon, Smashwords, and Scribd.

Edgar Awards 2014 Press Release

May 1, 2014, New York, NY:  Mystery Writers of America is proud to announce the winners of the 2014 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction and television published or produced in 2013. The Edgar® Awards were presented to the winners at our 68^th Gala Banquet, May 1, 2014 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, New York City.


BEST NOVEL

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger (Simon & Schuster – Atria Books)


BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR

Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews (Simon & Schuster - Scribner)


BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL

The Wicked Girls by Alex Marwood (Penguin Group USA - Penguin Books)


BEST FACT CRIME

The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War by Daniel Stashower (Minotaur Books)


BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL

America is Elsewhere: The Noir Tradition in the Age of Consumer Culture by Erik Dussere (Oxford University Press)


BEST SHORT STORY

"The Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository” – Bibliomysteries by John Connolly (Mysterious Bookshop)


BEST JUVENILE

One Came Home by Amy Timberlake (Random House Children’s Books – Alfred A. Knopf BFYR)


BEST YOUNG ADULT

Ketchup Clouds by Annabel Pitcher (Hachette Book Group – Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)


BEST TELEVISION EPISODE TELEPLAY

“Episode 1” – The Fall, Teleplay by Allan Cubitt (Netflix)


ROBERT L. FISH MEMORIAL AWARD

"The Wentworth Letter" – Criminal Element’s Malfeasance Occasional By Jeff Soloway (St. Martin’s Press)


GRAND MASTERS

Robert Crais
Carolyn Hart


RAVEN AWARD

Aunt Agatha’s Bookstore, Ann Arbor, Michigan


* * * * * *

THE SIMON & SCHUSTER - MARY HIGGINS CLARK AWARD
(Presented at MWA’s Agents & Editors Party on Wednesday, April 30, 2014)

Cover of Snow by Jenny Milchman (Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine Books)


 

# # # #

The EDGAR (and logo) are Registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office by the Mystery Writers of America, Inc.

FFB: "BEAST IN VIEW" by Margaret Millar (Reviewed by Patrick Ohl)

Patrick is back today for a second appearance as part of  Friday’s Forgotten Books.   If you have not seen Patrick’s blog, At The Scene Of The Crime, you are missing a lot of good stuff.  Very much worth your time....

Helen Clarvoe is terrified. A girl named Evelyn Merrick has been harassing her and making veiled threats, all while carefully treading a legal line that ensures her victim can’t call the police and have something done about it. But soon, Evelyn decides to expand on her work instead of limiting her victim to Helen Clarvoe. She begins to terrorize everyone connected with Helen, starting with telephone calls and escalating into more and more vicious behaviour…

And so Helen turns to her lawyer, Paul Blackshear, who makes it his mission to track down Evelyn. But things aren’t quite as simple as that might sound. Half of the people who know Evelyn describe her as an insane girl who will destroy herself one of these days. The other half is shocked at the first half, and describe Evelyn as a saint who would do anything for a friend and whose kindness knows no limits. What is the secret behind the enigmatic Evelyn Merrick?

It’s the plot of Margaret Millar’s Beast in View, a 1955 novel that won the MWA’s Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1956. And you can tell why. This book is quite simply groundbreaking, but it has one of the most difficult endings to describe. The ending has since been extremely overused, especially by Hollywood. It has become one of the most cliché endings imaginable, and just one adjective can quite easily give it away (as it did for me). From page 1, I was convinced I knew the ending. So did that make the book less enjoyable?

Oddly enough… no! I was absolutely amazed at how Margaret Millar manages to pull off such an unconventional ending while playing perfectly fair with her readers. She never directly lies to us, you see. The only deceptions that are played out are those legitimately played out on the investigator, Paul Blackshear. And when the ending comes, you can really see why people back in 1956 were so astounded by it. It is one of Margaret Millar’s trickiest bits of misdirection, and even if you know the ending you can admire her for inventing the ending in the first place, and then for the clever misdirection with which people were fooled back when this twist was new.

And even though this twist now seems as old as the Great Wall of China, there is plenty of emotional resonance to the ending nonetheless, with an absolutely perfect last sentence that encapsulates the book’s beauty and tragedy. It really is a shame that, thanks to its overuse, this twist will likely not fool modern readers. I envy anybody who can read this book and be surprised by the ending.

Paperback coming September 2016

But that’s not all. I was also genuinely shocked to see the topic of homosexuality discussed quite openly in the book. To be fair, the words “homosexual”, “gay”, and “lesbian” are never used (although the derogative term “fairy” is used once), but it’s quite clear that these things are going on. At one point, a lesbian makes a pass at another woman. Before she does so, another woman leaves the room sneering that she prefers the “normal ones”. The lesbian, Bella, runs an indecent abode, is overweight, ugly, and generally repulsive. She only appears for a handful of pages. Yet Margaret Millar manages to somehow turn her into a compelling character. Bella admits that the world has been cruel to her, and so to cope she began to eat, and eat, and eat, until she became the woman that we see in the present day. Although we see all the ugly things about Bella, this painful monologue shows that there is far more to her than meets the eye. There’s another homosexual character who is very important to the story, but describing this person and his backstory would give major spoilers for something that happens well into the book. (While Bella appears near the end of the book, her inclusion is only minor and I have used it to demonstrate just how talented Millar was at writing characters.)

All this proves yet again that gosh darn it all, Margaret Millar could write, and her work really has been unfairly forgotten. The characters in this story are among the most memorable you will come across in any novel ever written. The atmosphere of menace and dread in this story are absolutely top-notch, and it really tackles some risqué subject matter for the 1950s. The ending, although original at the time, has unfortunately become cliché since then through overuse, but that doesn’t take away from its emotional power. But even if you know the ending, like I did, you will undoubtedly find much to admire in Beast in View. This is another masterpiece from Margaret Millar and has reminded me once again why I love her stuff so much.

Note: Beast in View has been reissued by the Orion Publishing Group under their Phoenix imprint. More information can be found at the publisher’s page here. U. S. residents can easily order the book from The Book Depository here.

Patrick Ohl ©2012

At 19 years of age, Patrick Ohl has already read the complete works of Agatha Christie and has almost done the same with John Dickson Carr. His taste in mysteries is very comprehensive, including the intellectual challenges of John Rhode, the psychological suspense of Margaret Millar, and the violent world of master thief Parker. He currently plans to write his autobiography, tentatively entitled I can’t stand postmodernism, and to sell millions of copies worldwide, gain international fame and influence, and use this to get some attention for criminally neglected authors such as this one. His reviews can be found on his blog, At the Scene of the Crime.

Review: "CLIFF WALK: A MULLIGAN NOVEL" by Bruce Desilva

Reporter Liam Mulligan from the start knows this is going to be a very unpleasant story. Cosmo Scalici raises hogs and hogs will eat just about anything that ends up in their pens. That includes a child’s arm. While local law enforcement now has killed the hog so they can hopefully retrieve whatever is left of some little girl’s arm and hand, finding out to whom it belonged to and where it came from is going to be very hard. When Cosmo Scalici isn’t dealing with the hogs, he runs company, Scalici Recycling. They collect garbage from schools, jails, and restaurants all over Rhode Island. That means the arm could have come from just about anywhere.

That isn’t the only story Mulligan is working on though it is the most gruesome one right now. Mulligan is also working on figuring out who is doing some waste dumping, who is trying to buy the governor this time through campaign funds, and how long his paper, Providence Dispatch, is going to survive.

It is because he is sent out to Newport to attend an event during the weeklong Newport Jumping Derby that he witnesses Salvatore Maniella in deep conversation with the governor. The same Salvatore Maniella who is found hours later splattered across the rocks below Newport’s world famous Cliff Walk. The same Salvatore Maniella who is linked to various forms of pornography, prostitution, and others things.

In chasing the various stories, Mulligan finds himself a target as well as a confident to a number of people. He might make headway on his stories if the newspaper he works for wasn’t in such a state of collapse. The newspaper is crumbling around him with more and more layoffs, circulation cutbacks, financial cuts and other problems. Like any other business these days, it means that those that are left, Mulligan and others must increasingly share the workload to keep the paper afloat. His personal problems in terms of his health as well as an ex that just won’t leave him alone add to his burdens. Mulligan is at a crossroads, both personally and professionally, in a tale where faith and politics play increasing roles in cases that get darker as the weeks pass into the fall months.

Bruce DeSilva won both the 2011 Edgar and Macavity Awards for his debut novel, Rogue Island. Rightfully so, as that was a powerful book that firmly established the Liam Mulligan character as well as several others. Simply put, CLIFF WALK just might be a better book. Featuring the same occasionally sarcastic tone and laugh out loud moments (the obits are a must read on their own), several complex storylines where nothing is as it seems, and a sense that you right there with Mulligan every step of the way, he book is a good one from the start to the moving finish.

While it can be read as a stand-alone, those who have read Rogue Island will get far more out of CLIFF WALK as the characters and relationships continue to evolve.

CLIFF WALK: A MULLIGAN NOVEL

Bruce DeSilva

http://www.brucedesilva.com

A Forge Book (Tom Doherty Associates)

http://www.tor-forge.com

May 2012

ISBN# 978-0-7653-3237-0

Hardback  (also available in e-book and audio book)

318 Pages

$24.99

Material supplied by the good folks of the Plano, Texas Public Library System.

Kevin R. Tipple ©2012