Murder on Usher's Planet [Paperback]

With "Murder On Usher's Planet" Noël not only gives us her second novel but the second in her Commonwealth series. The first in the series was "The Duchess Of Kneedeep" and while some of the minor characters from that book make appearances here, this book can be read independently.

Garamond and Gwen Gray are cousins and industrial spies/private investigators/troubleshooters/whatever on the planet Shardé, and they are in between jobs when they are contacted by Gaust Kennes, the representative of the Provincial Governor of Kettlewharf, Sir Gargyle. Sir Gargyle has a problem, his partygirl and wild child daughter Lady Maudelaine has lifted a confidential, and damaging letter from the Shardé Native Chief. Lady Maudelaine has absconded with this letter, which might endanger Shardé's entry into the Empire, to minor royal celebrity Lord Rodrick Usher's planet to give to him as a gift. Soon afterwards, Gargyle has received a letter from Usher that he interpretes as a blackmail note.

Things then start to move quickly as the Gray's office is bombed and Kenes, who is in love with Lady Maudelaine, jumps the gun and transports to Usher's planet before the Grays where he ingratiates himself into Usher's coterie of hanger-ons as the haughty Lord Venga Avest.

Garamond and Gwen then transport themselves to Usher's castle, and Garamond walks right in while Gwen sneaks in through a window. As Garamond does his own ingratiating he meets Borcubast, Usher's butler and man Friday.

Meanwhile Lady Maudelaine has been having a rivalry for Usher's attentions with Lady Svarabatski. As Garamond is getting his tour of Usher's labyrinthine castle somebody has perished the difficult Lady Svarabatski and put her body on the alter in one of the castle's chapels. He, Borcubast, and Kennes/Avest, who has arrived independently, all find her body and are in a quandary as to what to do.

Noël was a specialist in science fiction humor, which, until recent years was an underappreciated artform. Noël was also one of the few, until recently, women sf humorists. Right off the cuff, the only other female sf humorist whose name that I can come up with until Noël was Evelyn E. Smith.

Noël seems to like to take a certain genre and parody it. With "The Duchess Of Kneedeep" she skewered the adventure genre, and with this novel Noël takes on cozy English drawing room murder mysteries, and Edgar Allan Poe (of course). The problem that I had, and blame this on me, was that I truly love the adventure genre, and her parody of it was inspired and hilarious. HOWEVER, I'm not really much of a fan of the English cozy, Agatha Christie for instance just bores me to tears, so Noël just seemed less satirically inspired here. While I liked Garamond and Gwen, the story just seemed to meander at times, and the ending seemed to be a cop-out. Still, I enjoyed the novel enough for me to continue to encourage some enterprising publisher to reprint all three of Noël's novels into one omnibus. Aside from her three short novels in the Ron Goulartian vein, she has also published two or three academic books on J. R. R. Tolkien.

On the other hand, while Sidonee's story in "Duchess" was more entertaining, when the novel was done, so was her story, however at the end of this novel I felt that Garamond and Gwen were interesting enough characters, and quite different than Sidonee, that they could have had more adventures. While I have around here someplace Noël's third novel "Speaker To Heaven", I have yet to read it, so I don't know whether or not this pair are featured in it or not. If not, maybe Noël should consider writing some new adventures for them. Humor in science fiction and fantasy is now pretty standard, so she might find a whole new audience. And while not as whacky as her previous novel, we still get plenty of droll material like "'This here portrait of his lordship were painted by Comrey Bhevlic durin' his Lucid Period.' A not particularly lucid Lord Roderick stared feverishly form the frame." I think that this novel would make a great movie.

As an aside, although it's more interpretive than representative, Jill Bauman's cover is really quite striking, and does the novel proud.

For this site I have also reviewed The Duchess of Kneedeep, check it out.

› Go to Amazon U.S. to see the review  4.0 out of 5 stars