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Wednesday, January 30, 2013 ( 1/30/2013 10:05:00 PM ) Bill S.   “HOW CAN WE GIVE YOU A DISCHARGE WHEN WE DON’T EXIST?”
The hardest boiled of the Cold War spies, Donald Hamilton’s Matt Helm has long languished in undeserved obscurity, mostly remembered for a series of cheesy spy “comedies” starring a thoroughly tiresome Dean Martin. But the pulp connoisseurs at Britain’s Titan Books (who have also been aligned with Hard Case Crime) have sought to bring the real Matt (a.k.a. “Eric”) back into the searchlight – and good for them. First two books in Hamilton’s 27-volume series, Death of a Citizen and The Wrecking Crew , are being published by the company, with the next five titles also announced throughout the next year.
As a teen in the sixties, I read as many of Hamilton’s Helm novels -- initially released in paperback by the legendary pulp line Fawcett -- as I could. The character debuted seven years after James Bond, but he quickly established himself as a grittier alternative to the dapper secret agent. For one thing, he took his role as a government sanctioned killer more seriously, ever aware of just how much the act changes a person. In the novel which introduced Helm, Citizen, there are no grandiloquent criminal masterminds for our hero to best; if anything, the affair in which our temporarily retired ex-spy finds himself reads more like something one of Dashiell Hammett’s p.i.s might have encountered. In fact, from the way that he describes himself it’s easy to visualize the man as a physical mirror to the Continental Op. When Helm’s debut opens, we see him as a softened married man in New Mexico -- the author of a series of western novels (which Hamilton also wrote) -- who has done his best to forget his history as a ruthless American agent during the Second World War. That past returns to bite him on the ass, however, when his old spy partner, a fur-bearing babe named Tina, shows up at the cocktail party of a neighboring Los Alamos researcher. When our hero finds the body of a self-proclaimed fledgling authoress in his writer’s studio, he’s forced to deal with Tina and her thuggish new partner Loris. Unsure if he is being pushed back into the spy biz by his former boss Mac, he leaves his wife and child to re-partner with Tina, who may or may not have his best interests at heart. Pursued across the New Mexico and Texas desert, our hero faces two big questions: why was he brought back into his old life and can he trust a single word out of his sexy ex-partner’s mouth? Lovers of noir fiction already know the answer to that second question, of course, but watching the formerly settled Helm slip back into his old self is a treat. As a narrator, Helm is mannishly opinionated: his take on the styles and mores of the Eisenhower Era are engaging at times, though a few of his thoughts on married life and what used to be called the Battle of the Sexes may bring some modern readers up short. This ain’t cuddly ol’ Dean Martin “slaygirl” territory by a long shot: Helm is the real bloody pulp deal. Great to have him back.
(First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: pulp fiction # |Sunday, January 27, 2013 ( 1/27/2013 03:04:00 PM ) Bill S.   “DARE SHE EVEN CONSIDER A LIFE WITH A HUMAN?” A contemporary fantasy romance, Constance Phillips’ Fairyproof (Crescent Moon Press) centers on Monique, a fairy princess who has fled her world to escape a forced marriage to a slimy piece of work named Eero. Pursued by her Protector brother Keiran, who is beholden to the duplicitous Eero, she winds up in Elgin, Illinois, where she meets handsome, if somewhat OCD, financial planner Daniel Elliot. Expecting to be able to use her fairy charm to immediately win him over, our heroine is startled to discover that Daniel appears to be resistant to her magic. Accustomed to surviving on the human plane by using her magic to control humans (“especially the men”), she finds Daniel’s unknowing immunity both challenging and frightening.Though impervious to her paranormal magnetism, the recently jilted Daniel is of course intrigued by our girl’s seemingly human attributes. Though he presents as a button-down type, we quickly realize (thanks to his taste in jazz) that he’s more than an emotional match for our heroine. As their romance blossoms, Keiran and his Protector partner Veronica get closer to uncovering Monique’s whereabouts. Behind all this, the villainous Eero is engineering a coup against the fairies’ governing council, as an increasing number of fairies visiting the human realm appear to be disappearing. Though her initial start-up reads like something you might find in a romantic comic fantasy (something that Thorne Smith might have concocted in his heyday), former Blogcritic Phillips takes her story seriously. If we don’t see as much of the fairy realm as we might like, Fairyproof depicts a believable modern fantasy world with sufficient recognizable subtext to ground her story. The fairies inhabiting our realm, we learn, have differing degrees of attachment to the humans that they live alongside: Keiran, we quickly see, is scornful toward humans, while other fairies have managed to successfully intermingle with them. One of these, a hipster-esque club owner named Billy, proves a dubious ally for Monique. Apart from the Machiavellian plotting in the realm, the world of fairies is facing a larger crisis as the number of its folk has been dwindling. The attempts of one of its council members, Leal, to increase contact between the fairy and human worlds have seemingly resulted in the deaths of Monique and Keiran’s parents, which has added to the Protector’s bigoted perspective. Also figuring into the plot is a mysterious piece of jewelry once owned by our hero Daniel, but apparently taken by his ex-fiancé. Not everybody is who they first appear to be in the story: more than one character from the realm has a prior connection to the “fairyproof” Daniel, and at least one who you expect to betray our heroine doesn't. While Phillips isn't as explicit with the anti-fairy crime subplot than this urban fantasy reader would like, she is deft in laying out the political machinations that fuel it all. And for those readers coming to this book primarily for its romantic elements, be assured that author Phillips lets it build with plenty of believable evocative detail. If heroine Monique shows perhaps one too many flashes of jealousy in regards to the clearly loyal Daniel, let’s just chalk it up to time spent in the Chicago ‘burbs. I've lived there; it could throw anyone off their stride. Phillips leaves room in her book for a sequel: good news for readers wanting to see the unresolved fairy population crisis get addressed – preferably with one or two hot sequences.
(First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: fantasy romance # | |
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