Category
Reviews
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Reviews, Television
Human Target Makes My Brain Explode
So I watched the first two episodes of Human Target this week, and I have to say it’s pretty good. The flashbacks in each episode let you know what’s going to happen next, but the how-did-we-get-here keeps you watching. Both episodes had their moments. And both had moments that had my eyes rolling like that guy in Scanners.
(Here be SPOILERS.)
In the first episode, security consultant Christopher Chance is on the inaugural journey of California’s new bullet train, travelling at 200 MPH towards Los Angeles. His client is the beautiful project manager of the train project. At one point, she realizes that someone has triggered all the emergency-stop handles, causing the train’s brakes to engage and overheat. If the brakes are used again they’ll EXPLODE! (Eye roll.)
Not only that, but in just 20 minutes they’ll be entering a tunnel, and inside the tunnel is a curve, and when they hit that curve they’ll fly right off the tracks and THEY’LL ALL DIE!!! (My eye rolling is now audible as far away as France.)
Apparently nobody ever thought of TURNING OFF THE DAMN ENGINE. Just guessing here, but at 200 miles per hour there’s probably some pretty serious wind resistance, and I’m guessing that in 20 minutes you would probably coast to a stop.
The second episode – in which Chance has to protect a hacker on a flight from San Francisco to Seattle, was even more farfetched. At one point the plane is one fire, and Chance is trying to increase airflow through the cargo bay to blow it out. The airstream above them is, according to him, going much faster, so he decides to “flip the plane” (roll inverted). This, instead of, oh, say, CLIMBING A FEW DOZEN FEET. (At this point my eyes rolled fully back in my head, with the whites visible from space.)
Despite these preposterous plot tricks, the show is actually pretty entertaining. It was even better under it’s original title, Burn Notice. Stay with me here: Chance is Michael Weston, his old buddy Winston is Sam Axe, and lunatic information broker Guerrero is lunatic gunrunner Fiona Glenanne (although Fiona is juuuust a bit easier on the eyes – Jackie Earle Haley is one freaky lookin’ dude). They even had Burn Notice’s “Carla” (Tricia Helfer) as the target on the first episode.
The main difference is that while you shouldn’t try the tricks on Burn Notice at home, you shouldn’t try the Human Target tricks on any planet governed by the laws of physics.
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Books, Reviews, Writing
Strictly Shut-Ended: “Quiller Balalaika”
12.21.09 | Permalink | 3 CommentsSo last night I finished Quiller Balalaika, the 19th and final novel about British superspy Quiller by Elleston Trevor (under his pen name “Adam Hall”). It was written in 1995, and deals with the rise of organized crime is post-Soviet Russia. It’s an above average entry in the series, and seemed especially good after the disjointed Kobra Manifesto. I intentionally saved Balalaika until then end, and not just because it was the last in the series. I read it last because, as he wrote it, Trevor was dying from cancer.
If the reality of his daily life affected the story, I didn’t notice it much. Perhaps in Quiller’s gambit to bring home the big prize, in which he risks more than he ever has before, and even admits to it, or in his open spirituality, but even these are not out of character with the rest of the books. And this is no “last episode”; unlike “M*A*S*H” or “Cheers”, for example, this is just one more adventure in a string of them. Trevor had said what he wanted, and didn’t have anything to add.
More remarkable is the fact that this book includes afterwords by Trevor’s wife and his adult son, in which they describe the last months and even days of his life. The writer loved life, wanted more, and keenly felt the loss of things he would never do. One thing he was damned sure he would do: finish his final work, dictating the last few pages as he was too weak to type.
Then the book was done, and so was he.
I wish I had met him. He was attending conventions as late as 1995, when he was already quite ill, and if I had been involved at all in mystery fandom then, we might have met. He sounds like such an interesting man, a proper gentleman, but engaging rather than reserved.
I wonder if we can see reflections of him in Quiller, his greatest creation. Quiller’s passion, his compassion, his discipline and neuroticism. Quiller could be fatalistic, could see that there may be no way out, could know that one day there would be no way out, and yet he always tried to pull one last rabbit out of the hat…
When I finish up a series like this and know that I’ll never read another Quiller book, I always feel a sense of loss. I always want more. But in this case it’s not just the books I’ll miss. I could have met him if I’d only known, and now, it’s too late.
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Books, Reviews
The Late Lamented, by Fredric Brown
I’m a big fan of Fredric Brown’s work, though I’ve read a lot more of his short stories than his novels. The Late Lamented is the third novel I’ve read in his Ed & Am Hunter private eye series, and I have to say, it really sucked.
As the story opens, the Hunter & Hunter detective agency has been hired by another private eye named Starlock to do a little investigating. It seems that the recently deceased treasurer of a small city outside of Chicago has been found to have embezzled almost fifty thousand dollars. Starlock thinks the man’s daughter may know something about the money, but he can’t very well investigate her himself, since he’s just given her a job.
So Ed is assigned to move into the daughter’s boarding house and get to know her a little better. Which he does, in spades.
And not to damn much else happens. The first 120 pages are so are just a build-up, with not much development at all. In the last 30 pages there’s a lot going on, but it wasn’t enough. It’s a shame, too, because Fred Brown has written books that have very twisty, inventive plots, but this was just a snooze. Not recommended.
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Books, Reviews
Forgotten Books: The Charlston Knife’s Back In Town
08.15.08 | Permalink | 2 CommentsUnlicensed private eye Jim Hardman and his buddy and sometimes partner Hump Evans are at a boxing match when Hump happens across a discarded invitation to a private party. He decides to crash it, but Hardman takes a pass. Turns out that was a good idea – the party was a set-up, for a robbery. Most of those invited were the kind who’d carry large sums of money, and who couldn’t tell the cops just how much they’d been take for.
The thieves were young and inexperienced, and didn’t think their clever plan through. The kind of people they robbed were not the kind of people who could go running to the cops, but they were the kind of people who had other options. And they brought in the Charleston Knife.
Hardman is hired by the mother of one of these baby-faced criminals to save him from the Knife. The Knife doesn’t just kill for money, it’s also his hobby, and Hardman is able to use this to his advantage, as he tracks his quarry and sets up a final confrontation.
The Hardman books by Ralph Dennis make up one of the most unappreciated crime series of the 70s. The writing is direct and unpretentious, the situations believable, and Dennis makes good use of Atlanta color, including Hardman’s hangout, the Stein Club, which was still in operation at least twenty years after this book came out.
The friendship between Hardman and Hump has been compared to that between Robert B. Parker’s Spenser and Hawk, but to me it seems more like the relationship between Joe Lansdale’s Hap Collins and Leonard Pine. In both Dennis’ and Lansdale’s books the protagonists are solidly blue-collar, usually struggling to make their way through life, and both authors make use feel that the sidekick has a life outside of the series.
The Charleston Knife is Back in Town is a great read, and if you find a copy, be sure to pick it up.
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Reviews, Writing
Breaking Down “The Last Time”
Last week, as part of the Valentine’s Day mystery story project – they may as well have called it “Love and Death” – I published a story here on the site, called “The Last Time“. It’s actually a sequel to another short I posted here, called “Alice“.
Since it’s short, I thought I’d run through “The Last Time” paragraph by paragraph and give you an idea of what I was trying to do. Go read the story and then read this.
I walked off the construction site when I got the call. I couldn’t go back there now, but that’s okay. I’ve been fired before.
The narrator, a construction worker (let’s call him Steve), gets a call. It’s important enough for him to quit his job, but he doesn’t seem to think it’s life and death (”…but that’s okay.”).
Four years without a word, then this. It was nice to know that she still thought of me when she had a mess that needed cleaning.
The call was from a woman who he hadn’t heard from in a long time. Steve is not particularly happy to hear from her, but he feels an obligation to go take care of whatever mess she’s in. And it’s not the first time he’s had to do this (”…she still thought of me…”).
As I climbed the four flights of stairs I promised myself this was the last time I would help her. Then I told myself it was the last time I’d make that promise.
Here I set the scene a little bit. It’s an apartment building, and not especially swank – there’s no elevator. Steve tries to convince himself that any responsibility he feels towards the woman has been discharged, but even he isn’t convinced, because this isn’t the first time he said it would be the last time.
I didn’t knock, just opened the door. She sat on the couch opposite, staring at nothing. As I stepped into the room I noticed the smell, the scent of fire and smoke hanging in the air, like the Fourth of July when I was a kid. But this wasn’t firecrackers.
He barges in, and the woman, Alice, is sitting there sort of withdrawn. And, of course, someone’s been shooting off a gun.
Then I saw the man’s body to the left, by the TV.
More than a typical mess.
I hadn’t been a cop in years but I knew what happened inside of ten seconds. Three shell casings just inside a doorway on the right. Three red holes in the man’s chest. One casing next to the body. One bullet wound in the head.
The crime scene shows that this was murder, not self defense. Three shots put the man down, and a fourth finished him off. Plus, I’m hoping to suggest that the police force was one of the jobs Steve walked away from for Alice.
The gun, an automatic, probably a .32 or .380, lay on the coffee table. Alice didn’t look at it. There were no tears. She was beyond that now.
Alice had played on Steve’s emotions for years, getting him to do her dirty work. But there’s no way to portray herself as the victim here, no point in crying about killing a man.
It was easy to see the girl I’d loved, but she wasn’t that girl any longer. The makeup was thick upon her face but couldn’t hide the lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes. Her hair was no longer blonde, but yellow, a color Mother Nature had never intended. The roses on her cheap print dress had faded.
Alice is older, and the worse for wear, and whatever feelings were between them have grown shopworn as well.
She stood up slowly and walked past me without a word, close enough to smell her perfume. I saw the plan. She goes, I stay.
No. She’d always asked a lot, more than she’d earned, but not this. She wasn’t worth my life. Maybe she never had been.
She wants Steve to take the fall, and for the first time he sees how far she’s willing to go to save herself.
I picked up the gun from the table and took careful aim. “Alice,” I said.
She didn’t turn around, just stopped in the doorway. I took a breath, held it, the sight picture steady on the back of her head. A moment passed and I exhaled.
He can’t pull the trigger. In spite of how she is, he can’t bring himself to kill her, not even when she wouldn’t hesitate to send him over to save herself.
Alice turned and started down the stairs. I listened to her footsteps as they grew fainter, finally punctuated by the slam of the front door.
I laid the gun on the table and sat down to wait for the police.
There’s nothing left to do but accept his fate.
In this story and in “Alice” I was trying to show a tragic, twisted relationship, between a woman who leaves a good man for a succession of bad ones, but always comes back when she needs help.
So why does Steve help her? I guess there’s a tendency to help those who are weak, who can’t look after themselves, even when they’re responsible for it. It’s tough to disown someone you love, even when they can’t stay straight.
There’s also some dark fatalism in this story, in the way Steve accepts being puninshed for a murder he didn’t commit. He doesn’t try to get away; he knows someone has to take the fall, and in the end he just can’t let it be Alice. Even though by this time there’s just memories of love.
As for the title, this is certainly the last time he’ll lend her a hand.
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