Gilbert M. Stack's Blog, page 22
December 15, 2022
The Last Coincidence by Robert Goldsborough
The Last Coincidence by Robert Goldsborough
Lily Rowan’s niece has been attacked and Archie Goodwin is determined to do something about it—even while protecting the secret that she’s been assaulted. Unfortunately, shortly after he gets on the case, the assailant is murdered. I thought Archie was going to be in some trouble over this, but things quickly take an even more dire turn when Rowan’s nephew confesses to the crime even though no one thinks he could have done it.
When Wolfe is badgered into taking the case to find the true killer, it looks to be a fairly typical mystery. The big problem is that none of the suspects can be eliminated because they all had the opportunity to commit the crime. This leads to a classic Wolfe ending in which he gathers everyone together to ferret out the guilty party.
The Last Coincidence is a fun, fasting moving book in which I was delighted to see Inspector Cramer return in all his former glory, shouting at Wolfe and trying to bully him into releasing information that Wolfe may or may not have, but isn’t going to give to him anyway. It was a delight, even if I didn’t figure out who the murderer was.
December 14, 2022
Destroyer 63 The Sky Is Falling by Warren Murphy
Destroyer 63 The Sky Is Falling by Warren Murphy
Just when you think Murphy has figured out how to write Destroyer novels again, he gives you a book like The Sky Is Falling. Aside from being tediously long, it just doesn’t catch any of the magic that the regular books in the series do. The main plot is that a corporation has figured out a way to put a short-term hole in the ozone layer and the resulting unfiltered sunlight wrecks just about everything it hits. The Soviets naturally think that this is a weapon the U.S. is preparing to deploy against them while the U.S. is trying to figure out who is messing with the ozone and threatening the planet.
Perhaps the reason this book is so weak is because Remo and Chiun are separated for most of it. Remo is on the trail of the ozone holes—ludicrous because Remo is showing even fewer functioning brain cells than normal—and Chiun is looking for stolen Sinanju treasure. This last storyline should have made this a great book. It’s an idea that is used very well later in the series. But this time, it just falls flat. As for Remo, sometimes Murphy makes it look like he couldn’t find his own two hands.
The single best part of the novel comes after the Soviets manage to get film of Remo killing a bunch of people. They are trying to figure out how he does it and after all of their unarmed combat experts come up blank, they turn to a bunch of their Olympic coaches. After overcoming their horror at seeing people killed right and left, all the coaches become fascinated with Remo’s speed, grace, strength, and timing. It’s just a couple of pages, but it was nice to have Murphy find a new way to show us how physically capable Remo is.
December 13, 2022
What Child Is This? by Gilbert M. Stack
What Child Is This? by Gilbert M. Stack
When I first started publishing short stories with Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine I had the idea to write a series of Christmas stories all with the title of a popular Christmas song. What Child Is This? was my first and only attempt and while ultimately AHMM didn’t take it (an assistant editor told me it was a lovely story but a bit too sweet for them). It was later picked up by Red Rose Publishing where it was well received and now I’ve made it available as a self-published work.
Christmas can be a complex holiday. On the one hand, it’s clearly a time of great joy for many people, yet, contrarily, for many suffering loss it reinforces their unhappiness. I think that that is why so many Christmas stories focus on the theme of healing—finding something that inspires a person to reach out of ourselves and help others, and in doing so to find that happiness that has been escaping them for so long.
That’s the circumstance that Agnes Hancock and her husband find themselves in in this story of the Great Depression. The Hancocks’ only child was killed in the First World War and they never quite recovered from their loss. Years later, a mute little boy wanders into Agnes’ store with no one apparently looking out for him. No one knows who the child is or where he comes from, and Agnes finds feeling she thought dead with her son reigniting inside her. Yet, even as she takes the child into her home, she knows that this newfound happiness can’t last. Somewhere the child’s parents have to be out there.
This story still brings tears to my eyes.
December 12, 2022
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
When I was in the eighth grade, a substitute teacher read the class the opening chapters of this story instead of teaching us math. I was totally entranced (unlike all my other classmates) and a couple of decades later when I came across the book in the library, I had to finish it. Now I read it every year at Christmas. This is a story about why we need to look beneath the surface and think about the things we think we know everything about, and how one small town is forced to do this when a bunch of troublesome kids manage to take over the annual Christmas play. This is a book that can bring both peals of laughter out of your throat and tears to your eyes and it can be enjoyed by the whole family from the youngest toddler to the eldest grandparent.
December 11, 2022
Steel Gray Eyes Now Available for PreOrder
My new novel Steel Gray Eyes is available for 99 cents if preordered by December 19. (It will be $2.99 after that.)
Steel Gray Eyes is the first book in a prequel trilogy to my Winterhaven series.
Before he became the greatest knight in Winterhaven, Willem, the future Lord Tavistock was a seventeen-year-old orphan determined to claim his father's patrimony. The only thing standing in his way was every greedy and faithless man in the honor. The only support he could find was his two teachers, his naked sword, and a pair of Steel Gray Eyes. This is the story of how Willem set out on the road to become the most respected man in the Duchy of Winterhaven.
Colony Two Mars by Gerald M. Kilby
Colony Two Mars by Gerald M. Kilby
Jann is not alone on Mars after all. In the secret mining colony mentioned in the first book, it turns out that a great many of the original colonists have survived and they aren’t particularly friendly. Jann gets pulled into the politics of their strange society and finds herself in another fight for survival as competing factions go to war with each other. She also has to face an ethical dilemma about whether or not she can permit the research COM was doing on human beings—the research which resulted in all of the deaths of the first book—be brought back to earth. (She herself hasn’t returned to earth out of fear of bringing the disease with her.)
Again, the novel is fairly fast moving and has a lot of tension and conflict. And all the while that Jann is fighting to survive in this novel, she and her friends are under the threat of earth sending new ships to Mars to get something that they refuse to believe doesn’t really exist—a miracle cure for aging. It’s a good set up for the next book.
December 10, 2022
The Bloodied Ivy by Robert Goldsborough
The Bloodied Ivy by Robert Goldsborough
Goldsborough certainly understands the relationship between Wolfe and Archie quite well. This time he uses it to have Archie finagle Wolfe into an investigation of a death that may not even be murder. In fact, the reader is eighty percent through with the novel before the first clear evidence that a crime has been committed is even uncovered.
The plot revolves around a thoroughly unlikeable college professor who seems to have gone out of his way to pick fights with people. When he falls into a ravine on campus, the police quickly call it an accident and wash their hands of the case. But the professor’s best friend can’t let it go, and even though he can’t think of anyone who would actually try to kill his old friend, he hires Wolfe to figure out who murdered him.
Not that anything is that easy—but then if it was simple, the book wouldn’t be worth reading.
I especially liked the end of this one, maybe because I was right.
December 9, 2022
Jingle Bell Pop by John Seabrook
Jingle Bell Pop by John Seabrook
If you’re looking for a short book to get you into the holiday spirit, you should consider giving Jingle Bell Pop a try. I listened to it on audible and found the combination of bright narrative, interviews and snippets of fancy songs to be an excellent balance. Starting with Silent Night, Seabrook takes you on a tour of the holiday classics exploring not only the history of individual songs, but the larger themes they fit within. He also spends quite a bit of time exploring what it takes to get your favorite Christmas song into the canon. It’s short and utterly enjoyable.
December 8, 2022
Along Came Holly by Codi Hall
Along Came Holly by Codi Hall
This is a sweet Christmas romance, apparently the third in a series. A holiday loving extrovert (Holly) crosses (figurative) swords with an apparently Scrooge-esq introvert (Declan). No one doubts from moment one that the two will end up together, it’s just a matter of how Hall will get us there and she chooses a very good path.
The novel starts off with a very cute “prank war” between Holly and Declan in which each strives to get the better of the other in what are truly good-natured holiday pranks. Somewhere in the midst of the war everyone around the two realize that despite their protestations to the contrary, Holly and Declan are interested in each other. But it takes a lot more of the book for them to start giving into their feelings. Part of the problem is that Declan’s parents have screwed him up and stolen his dreams and he needs to come to grips with his relationship with them before he’s ready to open up with Holly.
This is a light and fluffy holiday romance that will help to cultivate your Christmas spirit.
December 7, 2022
Forever After by Gilbert M. Stack
The following book isn't truly a Christmas story, but a significant part of the action happens around Christmas time, so I'm going to spotlight one of my books this Christmas season.
Forever After by Gilbert M. Stack
I find that great inspiration for novels often results from the convergence of multiple ideas that come together to form one very exciting and emotionally powerful book. That’s what happened for me when I wrote Forever After. I’d been playing with several plot ideas that were bouncing around in my head for years and one morning as I walked from the train to work, I realized how two of these notions could be blended to form a truly wonderful story.
First, there’s the issue of true love in a paranormal setting. I wanted to write about a man who came back from the grave—not to save his wife’s life from terrible danger (I think we’ve seen that plot a few times) but to simply get to continue being with her. To spice it up a bit, she not only doesn’t recognize her husband (because he is dead after all) but she has every reason to despise the person he appears to be. Could my hero use what he knew about his one true love to win her back again?
Second, I’d been thinking of a plot that might have worked for Batman. “Bruce Wayne” loses his memory and has to fake it through his life so no one finds out and puts him in an insane asylum. Except, I didn’t want to write about Batman and deal with a bunch of supervillains. I wanted to write about Bruce Wayne trying to do the right thing and save the company that he had driven into the ground through mismanagement (because he spends all of his time being Batman).
So, why not combine the two ideas? My hero, Paul Steele, dies in a selfless act of bravery right after a terrible and pretty senseless fight with his wife. He dies thinking she believes he regrets marrying her. But for reasons you’ll have to read the book to find out, he doesn’t go to the afterlife. Instead, he wakes up in the body of Griffin Knight—a billionaire screwup who has just about wrecked everything his parents and grandparents left him. Not realizing what has happened to him, Paul races home worried that his wife, Charlotte, will be both worried and furious at him and runs into his own wake. Naturally, claiming to be the dead man does not make a favorable impression and Paul has to take a really hard look at his life—at both of his lives—and figure out how he’s going to make things right again not only for his own family but for Griffin’s thousands of employees. In doing so, he figures out that he’s not the man he always imagined himself to be.
This is a story of love and growth and redemption and love again as Paul seeks to discover if he and Charlotte can have their Forever After right here on earth. I think you will agree that it is a journey well worth taking with them.
