Mister Slaughter By Robert R. McCammon

Mister Slaughter
By Robert R. McCammon
Copyright 2010

The adventures of Matthew Corbett continue in the third installment in Robert McCammon’s remarkable and thoroughly enjoyable series. Instead of solving mysteries, Matthew is hired security to escort a mass murderer to justice.

In the wake of his adventures in The Queen of Bedlam, Matthew is basking in his new found celebrity. He’s the toast of the town for unmasking The Masker. He dresses like a dandy and likes to be seen in New York’s trendiest taverns. But his budget is suffering for it.

A chance find of lots of cash would seem to be the answer to Matthew’s budgetary woes. Before he can put the money to work, however, he and Hudson Greathouse are hired and dispatched to the Bedlam Asylum to pick up Tyranthus Slaughter – a mass killer in London and a notorious highwayman in the New World. They are to escort him to New York where he will be shipped to London to meet justice and the hangman.

Matthew and Greathouse arrive at the asylum and take Slaughter into custody. However, greed waylays them and allows Slaughter to escape. Matthew and Greathouse barely survive and Greathouse is badly injured. They are rescued by some local Indians. One of the Indians, who spent a great deal of time in Europe, agrees to help Matthew track his quarry.

Slaughter proves to be the most diabolical being Matthew has ever encountered. He kills without compunction or motive on his way to meet his employer – an agent for the notorious Professor Fell who has placed a death mark on Corbett and Greathouse. Matthew is riddled with guilt as he and Walker In Two Worlds track Slaughter across the countryside in a game of cat and mouse. The bodies pile up and Matthew knows that, had he divulged his acquisition of wealth to Greathouse before Slaughter led them astray, these deaths would have been avoided.

Matthew finally catches up to Slaughter at a remote hog farm, renown for their fantastic sausage. There, he learns a great deal about the enigmatic Professor Fell. Before he can catch Slaughter, however, he escapes and sets out to carry out another murder assignment. The target is someone very close to Matthew.

Matthew pursues him and the two meet. When the chips are down, Matthew finds an unlikely ally and Slaughter meets his end. He returns to the Indian reservation to find Greathouse nearly healed and ready to return to New York.

In earlier reviews of Speaks the Nightbird and The Queen of Bedlam, I professed and indifference to mystery stories, but my enjoyment of those two novels which were indeed complex mysteries. This book was a cat and mouse chase story. I normally revel in chase stories like Mine and Gone South by McCammon. However, I did not enjoy this book as much as I did the earlier works.

This is not to say I didn’t enjoy the reading. McCammon has me hooked on Matthew Corbett. The deliciously morbid twist near the end was delightful. McCammon’s characters were as interesting as ever. The book suffered no major defect and is beloved by Corbett fans and fans of McCammon.

I didn’t find this chase story as compelling reading as the mysteries. All in all, the events in the chase were pretty predictable except for the aforementioned twist. Matthew’s mysterious ally was obvious. The fight scenes were pedestrian. I like Matthew more for his wits than his brawn.

This was also, by far, the shortest of the Matthew Corbett novels. It was not the immersive experience the two prior books were. I love a long, deep novel with rich characters, interweaved subplots, and compelling action. Of course, Corbett and Greathouse are already developed by the earlier novels and McCammon does a fine job with Walker In Two Worlds. But there were no subplots. The chase was straight forward.

My minor gripes aside, this was a fine entry in the Corbett series and an enjoyable read. It is not as dense and layered as the earlier entries, but shows another side of Corbett – the Matthew Corbett tried by physical challenges rather than mental.

The Stars, Like Dust By Isaac Asimov

The Stars, Like Dust
By Isaac Asimov
Copyright 1951

Biron Farrill is a student on Earth, completing his college studies when he detects a bomb in his dorm room. He escapes, but is whisked away after a professor informs him that his father, a political dissident, has been murdered by the Tyranni who rule many star systems.

He is sent to Rhodia, one of Tyran’s conquered planets, to learn about a plot to overthrow Tyranni rule. He is betrayed by the Director of Rhodia and is forced to flee with the Director’s daughter, Artemisia and her uncle Gilbert. They travel to the planet Lingane to meet with dissidents there.

There, they meet the Autarch of Lingane (who is revealed to be Sander Jonti, the man who sent Farrill to Rhodia from Earth), who seems to possess knowledge of a rebellion world. With him and his followers, the group travel to the heart of the Horsehead Nebula — they believe that for any rebellion world to exist and not be known to the Tyranni, it must be located in a place like the Horsehead Nebula.

The Tyranni spaceship stolen by Farrill is being tracked by a fleet of Tyranni vessels led by Simok Aratap, the Tyrannian Commissioner. With him is the Director, who is shown to be nervous about his daughter's and brother's well-being. They keep themselves at a distance for fear of Farrill discovering them until Farrill lands on one planet in the heart of the nebula.

The Autarch believes that the planet is the rebellion world. However, there is no sign of life anywhere. When the Autarch and Farrill leave the spaceship to apparently set up a radio transmitter, Farrill faces the Autarch and accuses him of getting his father killed at the hands of the Tyranni. The Autarch affirms the accusation, to which Farrill adds that the Autarch feared his father's growing reputation. That is why he arranged Farrill's father's death.

In a fight, Farrill subdues the Autarch with help from the Autarch's aide, Tedor Rizzet, who reveals that he is ashamed of the Autarch for killing a great man like Farrill's father. Later, as Farrill and Rizzet try to explain everything to the rest of the crew they picked up from Lingane, the Tyranni fleet arrives and takes them prisoner. Aratap interrogates Farrill, Artemisia, Gillbret and Rizzet in order to ascertain the coordinates of the rebellion world but they do not know where it is. However, the Autarch reveals the coordinates to Aratap. Rizzet kills the Autarch with a blaster in anger.

While Aratap interrogates Farrill, Gillbret manages to escape to the engine room of the spaceship and short the hyperatomics. Farrill, realising the danger, manages to contact Aratap. The engines are repaired, but Gillbret is injured and later dies.

The space jump is made with the coordinates given to them by the late Autarch. However, they find a planetless system consisting only of a white-dwarf star. Aratap lets Farrill and the others go, believing that there is no rebellion world. Aratap makes it clear that he will never to be chosen as Director. Biron and Artemisia are allowed to marry.

It is eventually revealed that there is indeed a rebellion in the making, located on Rhodia itself. The Director is its leader; he deliberately took on the persona of a nervous and timid old man to throw off suspicion from himself and his planet.

It is further revealed that the Director, who possesses a collection of ancient documents, has searched for, and found, a document that will help a future empire-yet-to-be (likely Trantor) govern the galaxy. This document is ultimately revealed to be the United States Constitution.

The Stars, Like Dust works on a level not achieved by The Currents of Space or Pebble in the Sky. It does not try to be a complex spy thriller told in less than 200 pages. Nor does it get weighed down in heavy politics or distracting and ineffective subplots. The Stars, Like Dust is pure space opera loaded with shootouts, space trips, mysterious planets, and evil bad guys.

This is not, in and of itself, the definition of good science fiction. Subplots, intrigue, complex schemes and thick character development are all ingredients of great general fiction and genre fiction. But when an author tries and fails to effectively incorporate these elements into the story, the result is drudgery for the reader. When an author tries, and succeeds to tell a simple, but exciting, story, that’s reading gold.

This is not to say The Stars, Like Dust was a great story telling achievement. It had a couple serious flaws. The first was the introduction of a mysterious document Biron was supposed to secretly obtain on Earth that was so powerful it would help foment revolution. This is the book’s only subplot and mercifully, Asimov dismisses his own foolishness until near the end when the characters have an, “oh yeah, what about that?” moment.

That document is, of course, the U.S. Constitution. While I am as reverent of the Constitution and its principles as anyone, I hate to see it inserted into science fiction. I can’t help but remember William Shatner’s melodramatic reading of the Preamble in the Star Trek episode, The Omega Glory. That is a painful memory. This subplot didn’t need to be there.

Of course, there is also the dated sexism in the story. Biron’s love interest, Artemisia, is the consummate female lead in these pulp era science fiction stories. She is a bystander. She is a passive narrative voice. She has no active role. Today’s readers are a little more demanding of their heroines.

Asimov’s early works deliver for me just what I want them to: good stories that are well-paced and well told. Writers who cut their teeth on pulp magazines work hard to economize words and tell stories that move to economize on space. Asimov, like Bradbury, Matheson, Dick, and the other greats who emerged from this format, rank among the great story tellers and I love them!

Although it was the third written, The Stars, Like Dust is the first in the chronology of the Galactic Empire series that lies between Asimov's Robots series and Foundation series. It takes place centuries before the rise of Trantor as the rulers of the galaxy. The beauty of the Galactic Empire series is, it need not be read in chronological order by story or by publication date. The novels each stand on their own.

A Stir of Echoes By Richard Matheson

A Stir of Echoes
By Richard Matheson
Copyright 1958

Tom Wallace is a workaday, blue collar joe in 1950s suburbia. He has a lovely wife, a little boy, and a baby on the way. One evening, he attends a neighborhood party and brings along his oddball brother in law. Everything changes for him and his neighbors.

Tom, his wife, Anne, and her brother, Phil, attend a party held at their next door neighbor’s house. They attend to oblige them, but dread it because they throw dreadfully boring parties. Phil, a Berkley psych major, decides to inject some excitement into the party by hypnotizing someone. All turn down his offer until Tom agrees. Phil puts him under.

Everyone has a good laugh at Tom’s antics under hypnosis. Tom and Anne go home that night and Tom is unable to sleep. He goes to the kitchen and finds there a woman, dressed in black. Tom and Anne are discomfited by the specter and her frequent appearances put a strain on their marriage.

Tom begins to sense the feelings of people around him and eventually can read their thoughts. He learns of the amorous desires of one of his female neighbors for him. He also learns that his best buddy is cheating on his pregnant wife.

Slowly, Tom and Anne’s life and the lives of their neighbors descend into chaos. Husbands and wives try to kill each other. Tom predicts disasters and death. All the while, the specter of the woman in black demands Tom’s attention. He needs to identify her and find out what it is she wants.

With a little sleuthing and use of his new abilities, Tom learns that the woman is his next door neighbor – and landlord’s – sister in law who moved away with nary a goodbye to her neighbors. Tom figures out that she was murdered and he’s confident that he knows who killed her. But at just the wrong moment, his enhanced intuition fails him and the murderer turns out to be the unlikeliest of the suburbanites.

I love the works of Richard Matheson – his print work and his screenwork. The man is nothing short of brilliant and was a pioneer in the art of small screen writing and teleplays. With that said, A Stir of Echoes left me a little disappointed.

One thing that every reader of Richard Matheson knows is that you are going to get sparse prose. Matheson was an old pulp writer and pulp writers had to economize on words to get as much story as possible into as few words as he could manage. This takes real talent and few – if any – were as good at economizing words as Matheson. In A Stir of Echoes, he could have used a few more words.

There were too many characters and none of them were developed adequately. Matheson is not a writer of character studies, but his books and stories usually give you a well developed main character that the reader can root for. Not so in this book. Tom is sympathetic, but not someone I really rooted for. Both his virtues and character flaws were underplayed. He was flat.

The periphery characters came and went as was necessary for the story, but also were lifeless. A rogue babysitter kidnaps their child for no apparent reason. His amorous neighbor is amorous, but we don’t know why. His landlord doesn’t like him, but we don’t know why. The ghost should have been chilling, sympathetic, ominous, or something. She was little more than a device for the story.

What did stand out as good in A Stir of Echoes was the mystery and the two plot twists that came near the end. I’m not a reader of mysteries, but enjoy them when they are part of a good ghost story or other story of the supernatural. Matheson had me thinking, analyzing and guessing up until the end, and then blue all of my predictions out of the water with a well-developed and plausible twist. Even when he falls short on character development, count on Matheson to come through with a solid plot.

The subtext of A Stir of Echoes was not hard to discern, given the time it was written. Suburbs of the 1950s were seen as idyllic where nice white people worked at a factory, paid their bills, and led nice, white people lives free from strife and misfortune. Matheson showed that every neighborhood has some sort of dark undercurrent. That those days and places of Ozzie and Harriet were not always as idyllic as portrayed or as Baby Boomers remember them.

A Stir of Echoes was made into a movie in 1999 starring Kevin Bacon. This is a rare case of the movie being superior to the book. The movie better developed its characters and the script made the ghost story and the underlying murder much more ominous and creepy.

This book is a must read for any fan of Richard Matheson because, by virtue of the movie and its standing with fans of horror cinema, it is one of his better known and more popular titles. However, fans of the movie are going to be disappointed in the one dimensional prose and flat characters.