Today we have a lighthearted homage to James Bond, Matt Helm, Napoleon Solo, and all those classic cold war spies in a briskly paced thriller.
My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.
Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.
John Nuclear at the Perihelion Palace by Berthold Gambrel B
The title character, John Nuclear, is a semi-retired special agent who is called back into service by his old boss for a mission to recover a certain mysterious item, the tianming. Exactly what the tianming is, (besides a MacGuffin) he isn't told. All he's asked to do is get it any way he can. And to do that, he must go to the Perihelion Hotel where the criminal who has gotten hold of the the tianming is auctioning it off to the highest bidder. Of course Mr Nuclear isn't the only agent that has been assigned to acquire the tianming. The others include; Tau Centi, a rather mysterious agent of which not much is known about, Ivan Volgakov, a subtle, charismatic agent, Professor Ulysses H Pinecone (pronounced peen - ah - conay) an inventor with a interesting bodyguard, and La Rouge Elite, the Queen of Hearts, one of the most dangerous and successful agent still active in the world. Over the course of the story Mr Nuclear get to meet and deal with all of them, one way or another.
Since this is a novella length story, it's intricate plot unfolds at a breakneck pace, always with lots of twists, turns, and gunfights along the way. Only at the very end do we learn the purpose of the tianming device.
As I mentioned in the lede, Mr Gambrel has written a fast paced thriller laced with humor and cheerful shout-outs to all the staples of the Bonds and Solos of books and movies from the 60's and 70's - from beautiful spies, to unexpected villains, gunfights high stakes, and narrow escapes. A treat for fans of the genre
Thanks so much for this! :)
ReplyDeleteMy pleasure.
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