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3.0 out of 5 stars
A Hard-Boiled World Saver, May 13 2004
Spider has always been known as a writer with a strong taste for slumming (sorry, I meant punning), coupled with outlandish situations and strong, personable characters that are easy to empathize with. For this book, he decided to pay homage to some of the great mystery/detective writers of yesterday, deliberately trying to emulate their styles, mannerisms, and at least for his protagonist, their characters. In doing so, he seemed to lose sight of the idea of telling a cohesive integrated story, as this book very much separates itself in to two separate plot lines that are really only marginally related to each other.His protagonist is, naturally, a private eye, one who tries hard to imitate the role models defined by Chandler, MacDonald, Spillaine, and others. He is called on to investigate some strange goings on in the most incredible bordello ever devised, Lady Sally's Place, located just across the bridge from the UN. It's a place where the 'artists' have 'clients', where talking dogs and telepathic twins are considered normal, a place where everyone can satisfy their desires without guilt or fears. Our P.I. quickly accepts the impossibilities of this place, and by making consistent intuitive leaps (which will sometimes leave you gaping at the holes he jumps over), fairly quickly solves the original mystery, falls in love, and is accepted as being good enough to join the crowd at Lady Sally's. Most of this section is quite good, with puns flying, clues properly presented, and the scene well painted, although it will definitely help if you have read several other books in the Callahan series, as many of the characters introduced here are very much cameos, with their background buried in the those other stories. The concept of Lady Sally's place is one that should make you think, and might help give you completely different viewpoint on the 'world's oldest profession' - but this item was covered better, with more grittiness and real-world activity, in Callahan's Lady. But after solving the one mystery, the story takes off in a totally different direction, where the crowd of Lady Sally's is now engaged in a strong bit of world saving. The premise is good - nuclear weapons smuggled into the US and other countries by pacifists as the ultimate hammer to convince the world to abrogate war. Unfortunately, the solutions to finding these weapons and the plotters behind them is very far-fetched, from having Nichola Tesla (one of the early pioneers of electricity) whip up a super-duper circuit to pinpoint the weapon's location to the immediate acceptance by all concerned that this was really happening without any objective basis in known fact. This section is also much more serious than the first half, and the hard-boiled P.I. character that Robinson has so carefully constructed in the first half seems to get lost. This book should probably have been published as two separate novelettes, given the disparity of plot line between the two halves. As it is, it makes for an enjoyable read, but is certainly not Spider's best, and not even one of the better Callahan series tales. Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)
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