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Nothing Burns in Hell
A private detective married to a sincere Wiccan is hired to witness an illegal money exchange that goes violently wrong
287 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1998
1 person is currently reading
105 people want to read
About the author
Philip José Farmer
592 books886 followersPhilip José Farmer was an American author, principally known for his science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories. He was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, but spent much of his life in Peoria, Illinois.
Farmer is best known for his Riverworld series and the earlier World of Tiers series. He is noted for his use of sexual and religious themes in his work, his fascination for and reworking of the lore of legendary pulp heroes, and occasional tongue-in-cheek pseudonymous works written as if by fictional characters.
Farmer is best known for his Riverworld series and the earlier World of Tiers series. He is noted for his use of sexual and religious themes in his work, his fascination for and reworking of the lore of legendary pulp heroes, and occasional tongue-in-cheek pseudonymous works written as if by fictional characters.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 28, 2013
Well, maybe four and a half stars....
Here is a book without any real formal excellence that is a hoot to read. One could take a whole graduate-level course in literary hermeneutics just to track down the references in the many fake law firm names that Farmer throws at us.
Thomas Gresham Corbie is a private investigator who gets into several cases in the course of Nothing Burns in Hell which all end up being interrelated. The tale is set in Peoria, which Philip José Farmer ends up likening to Agamemnon and Clytemnestra's Argos (or is it Mycenae?) In the first hundred pages, Corbie ends up being imprisoned by a family of swamp rats from Goofy Ridge, but he manages to escape. Next, he winds up being hired to sort out the insoluble quarrels of the wealthy and publicity-fearing Alliger family, whose spineless heir had married a young woman from Hollywood with a questionable background.
Anyhow, bullets fly, literary allusions fly, and a good time is had by all. At first, I thought to myself, "Why am I reading this dreck?" Then, within a couple dozen more pages, I asked myself, "So, what other dreck has this fine author written?"
Here is a book without any real formal excellence that is a hoot to read. One could take a whole graduate-level course in literary hermeneutics just to track down the references in the many fake law firm names that Farmer throws at us.
Thomas Gresham Corbie is a private investigator who gets into several cases in the course of Nothing Burns in Hell which all end up being interrelated. The tale is set in Peoria, which Philip José Farmer ends up likening to Agamemnon and Clytemnestra's Argos (or is it Mycenae?) In the first hundred pages, Corbie ends up being imprisoned by a family of swamp rats from Goofy Ridge, but he manages to escape. Next, he winds up being hired to sort out the insoluble quarrels of the wealthy and publicity-fearing Alliger family, whose spineless heir had married a young woman from Hollywood with a questionable background.
Anyhow, bullets fly, literary allusions fly, and a good time is had by all. At first, I thought to myself, "Why am I reading this dreck?" Then, within a couple dozen more pages, I asked myself, "So, what other dreck has this fine author written?"
August 14, 2010
Quite frankly one of the best books I've read in a very long time. Quirky, full of graphic action, absurd, humorous, eclectic and believable.
Some examples to wet your appetite: Our hero's wife is a Wiccan (referencing Oz) who charts each day's horoscope, a great fistfight occurs in a canoe and someone loses an eye, bugs bunny's ancestor plays a major role, a thug gets a special comeuppance, trivial classic characters are used (Glinna the good witch, the cab driver from The Hound of the Baskervilles, etc) and finally our PI is limited by physics, law and budgetary constraints.
Some examples to wet your appetite: Our hero's wife is a Wiccan (referencing Oz) who charts each day's horoscope, a great fistfight occurs in a canoe and someone loses an eye, bugs bunny's ancestor plays a major role, a thug gets a special comeuppance, trivial classic characters are used (Glinna the good witch, the cab driver from The Hound of the Baskervilles, etc) and finally our PI is limited by physics, law and budgetary constraints.
May 22, 2015
By the end of this book, the plots were flying around each other so fast and so convolutedly that I'm not sure I could tell you exactly what happened. I get the feeling that parts of this might have been a play on the tropes of the mystery genre, but since I read very few mysteries, it all left my head spinning. However, I very much enjoyed that it was set in central Illinois (including a mention of my hometown). It's not often that I have such a good idea of the setting a book, though I'm sure the driving directions would be less entertaining to someone not from the area.
July 31, 2024
Hard boiled private investigator novel with lots of action. Tom Corbie is asked to follow his client to a blackmail payoff, as backup. That was the first hundred and some pages. It was so complete that I thought it was just a novella and we’d get one or two more cases. His next case was to do research on the daughter-in-law of the wealthiest man in town. Alliger had another firm do a background check but there were plenty of holes in that report. Now he’s hiring Corbie.
I wasn’t tracking all of the relationships as the characters were being introduced into the story and some of it was probably relevant. The plot was probably a bit more clever and consistent than it felt like. There were some funny scenes, but some gruesome ones, too. 3.6 stars. The book says mystery on the spine. I missed that and thought it would be science fiction, because of the author. I generally like SF better.
I wasn’t tracking all of the relationships as the characters were being introduced into the story and some of it was probably relevant. The plot was probably a bit more clever and consistent than it felt like. There were some funny scenes, but some gruesome ones, too. 3.6 stars. The book says mystery on the spine. I missed that and thought it would be science fiction, because of the author. I generally like SF better.
May 24, 2024
review of
Philip José Farmer's Nothing Burns in Hell
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - May 24, 2024
I don't really know Philip José Farmer's work. I may've read one novel by him, maybe a short story or 2. He has the reputation of being the SF writer who wrote about extra-terrrestrials having sex w/ humans. Maybe he was guy who wrote Venus on the Half-Shell under the pen-name of "Kilgore Trout", an invention of Kurt Vonnegut. For no particularly good reason, I never had much interest in him. During the pulp era many SF writers also wrote crime fiction & westerns - trying their hand at 3 popular genres. It seems to me that Farmer wasn't from the pulp era & he's not listed in Lee Server’s Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers so I reckon I'm right about that. Still, when I saw that he'd written this crime fiction it got my interest so I bought it & read it.
This was copyrighted in 1998 & there're plenty of aspects to it that make it more contemporary than the earlier crime fiction that it might get lumped in w/. Take, e.g., this description of the religion of Glinna, the woman married to the detective:
"Though she'd been raised by parents who were witches, or wiccas, as they prefer to be called, at the age of twelve she had fallen from grace. She'd left the religion of the Earth Mother and become a devout member of the Second Revised Free Will Apostolic Baptists. Just after graduation from UCLA, she'd gone back to her natal religion. Become, as it were, a born-again witch. And then she became deeply ashamed and remorseful about having sold her urine." - p 24
I seem to find good description in almost everything I read. Here's an example of something I like:
"The sun was shining as if it wanted to nova out and destroy the solar system. The air was steadily getting warmer. Clouds here and there were scouting for the places where the advancing storm could do the most damage." - p 28
Farmer is associated w/ having a good sense of humor. I agree.
"Here lived Michael H. Corbie, Ph.D., retired ex-Bradley University professor of matematical economics. My father is well-known in this field as the author of Wall Street as the Theater of the Absurd and Checks and Balances in the Jivaro Shrunken Head Market, 1890-1940. The book he wrote under the nom de plume of Malander P. Snike, Great Assholes in American History, is much more widely known. Half the subjects in the book are admirals and generals, one-forth are evangelists, and the rest are politicians." - p 29
"During the 1930s, pines and firs, trees more at home farther north than central Illinois, were planted here, making this area even more schizophrenic. The sandy forest floor and the sand dunes had been deposited by a melting glacier 15,000 years ago. Such un-Illinois plants as sand flocks, silvery bladder pods, and prickley-pear cactuses grew here. Their nearest relatives were in the American sountwest deserts. Here also lived a reptile unique to Illinois, a lizard with six yellow stripes. Like the desert plants of this area, it would be much more at home in Arizona." - pp 61-62
Can you imagine some lizards hanging out in the desert saying to each other: "I'm tired of the lack of seasons here, I want to live somewhere where there's snow!"
Farmer's an expert at showing the more depraved side of humanity. something he shares w/ hard-boiled writers.
"Milly Jane guffawed, and she said, "A fine lookin' figure of a man! His pricks' shriveled up from the cold, yet he puts you two punies to shame!"
""Shut your dirty mouth!" Deak said. "He'll be a fine figure when we get done with him! Anyway, if Almond and me ain't heavy hung, how come you married us?"
"" 'Cause it takes two of you to make one good man!"
"Deak, scowling, told me to sit down again. Almond opened the wardrobe and brought out a roll of industrial tape and several lengths of rope. From his pants pocket he took out a big jackknife to cut the tape. After securing my wrists behind me and my ankles, he bound me close to the back of the chair with rope around my stomach." - pp 72-73
Apparently, the following myth originates w/ this bk. I was hoping for this to be an actual native american story but the great oracle tells me otherwise.
"And these cynics love the Peoria Indian myth about Withiha, the Great White Hare, the prototype for Bugs Bunny. The myth goes that, in the early days after the creation of the world, the long-eared trickster spirit invented corn. After he'd eaten the first batch, some undigested kernels in his first droppings took root and became the first human beings." - pp 169-170
An origin myth in wch humans come from trickster rabbit shit? That's refreshingly different from humans being made in the image of 'God'.
"We're taught in geometry class and common sense tells us that parallel lines never meet. But there's a system of geometry, invented by a German mathematician named Reimann, in which parallel lines do eventually meet. The Alliger family members were on this kind of tracks, laid down by the self-will of each, and there was going to be a hell of a wreck when the locomotives, going full speed, whistles blowing, bells clanging, crashed into each other at the Reimann Express Junction." - pp 172-173
Fascinating. Using Non-Euclidean Geometry to explain familial relations in the case of particular people relevant to the detective's investigation. I like it. But forget about geometry, what about porn?, you ask.
"But the chief priestess, Clitorpatra (played by Diana) talked Agamemnon into a contest. If the women could outscrew that Greek leaders, they'd be given their freedom and a ship to sail to wherever they wished to go. The women won, of course. But the villainous Agamemnon broke his oath to free the priestesses. Lying on his back, panting, drained after his heroic efforts, he ordered his men to slay the women. They, however, were too exhausted to rise from the floor." - p 182
"One thing I was sure of. Lorna Mordoy had lied in her report to Simon Alliger. Take the dog license. One of the ways to find the location of a person is to check on the county or city licenses for pets and the record of the animal's vaccinations. If the subject had gotten a license or taken the pet to a veternarian, his address and time of license purchase could be determined." - p 194
Did you ever think about that? There're so many ways of tracking a person's whereabouts that it's amazing. Obviously, debit or credit card purchases are extremely traceable. These days, at least where I live, paying for parking at a meter requires entering one's car's license plate - thusly placing the car at a certain location at a certain time. Many people are probably of the opinion that if one isn't up to no good then what does it matter? Maybe only criminals care. I think otherwise, I think privacy is important - if it's NOT important then I ask for all relevant data about every single person who has access to my own data. What wd that reveal? What crimes are they up to?
Has there ever been a crime fiction novel w/o fighting in it? Not in this one, at least.
"I went backward, my arm pulling Deak with me. His revolver fell to the deck as I pulled him over the railing. I hit the water on my back. He was on top of me, his face now pressed against mine. Those long fleshy tumorous tendrils ground against my mouth. But I was so occupied with the shock of encountering him, the numbness of my left arm from the wrist up to the shoulder, and the suddenness of what had happened I didn't feel the repulsion I'd have had under other circumstances." - p 220
There are what one might call 'the usual complications':
""Then this Diana," I bent my head toward Mrs. Roger Alliger, "showed up. She was the same age, and she was a runaway, too, only they were going in different directions. The newcomer looked a lot like Diana Rolanski. Why not? She was her first cousin. Her mother—dead by then—was Mary Groat. Myrna Rolanski's sister. Mary was the newcomer's mother, and Deak Mobard was her father. The new comer's real name, I believe, was Harly Mobard."" - p 264
I'm reminded of a Spike Jones routine. All in all, I enjoyed this & even recommend it - but not to the exclusion of life itself. As much as I love fiction, I recommend going out into real life even more - but avoid the Deak Mobards of the world.
Philip José Farmer's Nothing Burns in Hell
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - May 24, 2024
I don't really know Philip José Farmer's work. I may've read one novel by him, maybe a short story or 2. He has the reputation of being the SF writer who wrote about extra-terrrestrials having sex w/ humans. Maybe he was guy who wrote Venus on the Half-Shell under the pen-name of "Kilgore Trout", an invention of Kurt Vonnegut. For no particularly good reason, I never had much interest in him. During the pulp era many SF writers also wrote crime fiction & westerns - trying their hand at 3 popular genres. It seems to me that Farmer wasn't from the pulp era & he's not listed in Lee Server’s Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers so I reckon I'm right about that. Still, when I saw that he'd written this crime fiction it got my interest so I bought it & read it.
This was copyrighted in 1998 & there're plenty of aspects to it that make it more contemporary than the earlier crime fiction that it might get lumped in w/. Take, e.g., this description of the religion of Glinna, the woman married to the detective:
"Though she'd been raised by parents who were witches, or wiccas, as they prefer to be called, at the age of twelve she had fallen from grace. She'd left the religion of the Earth Mother and become a devout member of the Second Revised Free Will Apostolic Baptists. Just after graduation from UCLA, she'd gone back to her natal religion. Become, as it were, a born-again witch. And then she became deeply ashamed and remorseful about having sold her urine." - p 24
I seem to find good description in almost everything I read. Here's an example of something I like:
"The sun was shining as if it wanted to nova out and destroy the solar system. The air was steadily getting warmer. Clouds here and there were scouting for the places where the advancing storm could do the most damage." - p 28
Farmer is associated w/ having a good sense of humor. I agree.
"Here lived Michael H. Corbie, Ph.D., retired ex-Bradley University professor of matematical economics. My father is well-known in this field as the author of Wall Street as the Theater of the Absurd and Checks and Balances in the Jivaro Shrunken Head Market, 1890-1940. The book he wrote under the nom de plume of Malander P. Snike, Great Assholes in American History, is much more widely known. Half the subjects in the book are admirals and generals, one-forth are evangelists, and the rest are politicians." - p 29
"During the 1930s, pines and firs, trees more at home farther north than central Illinois, were planted here, making this area even more schizophrenic. The sandy forest floor and the sand dunes had been deposited by a melting glacier 15,000 years ago. Such un-Illinois plants as sand flocks, silvery bladder pods, and prickley-pear cactuses grew here. Their nearest relatives were in the American sountwest deserts. Here also lived a reptile unique to Illinois, a lizard with six yellow stripes. Like the desert plants of this area, it would be much more at home in Arizona." - pp 61-62
Can you imagine some lizards hanging out in the desert saying to each other: "I'm tired of the lack of seasons here, I want to live somewhere where there's snow!"
Farmer's an expert at showing the more depraved side of humanity. something he shares w/ hard-boiled writers.
"Milly Jane guffawed, and she said, "A fine lookin' figure of a man! His pricks' shriveled up from the cold, yet he puts you two punies to shame!"
""Shut your dirty mouth!" Deak said. "He'll be a fine figure when we get done with him! Anyway, if Almond and me ain't heavy hung, how come you married us?"
"" 'Cause it takes two of you to make one good man!"
"Deak, scowling, told me to sit down again. Almond opened the wardrobe and brought out a roll of industrial tape and several lengths of rope. From his pants pocket he took out a big jackknife to cut the tape. After securing my wrists behind me and my ankles, he bound me close to the back of the chair with rope around my stomach." - pp 72-73
Apparently, the following myth originates w/ this bk. I was hoping for this to be an actual native american story but the great oracle tells me otherwise.
"And these cynics love the Peoria Indian myth about Withiha, the Great White Hare, the prototype for Bugs Bunny. The myth goes that, in the early days after the creation of the world, the long-eared trickster spirit invented corn. After he'd eaten the first batch, some undigested kernels in his first droppings took root and became the first human beings." - pp 169-170
An origin myth in wch humans come from trickster rabbit shit? That's refreshingly different from humans being made in the image of 'God'.
"We're taught in geometry class and common sense tells us that parallel lines never meet. But there's a system of geometry, invented by a German mathematician named Reimann, in which parallel lines do eventually meet. The Alliger family members were on this kind of tracks, laid down by the self-will of each, and there was going to be a hell of a wreck when the locomotives, going full speed, whistles blowing, bells clanging, crashed into each other at the Reimann Express Junction." - pp 172-173
Fascinating. Using Non-Euclidean Geometry to explain familial relations in the case of particular people relevant to the detective's investigation. I like it. But forget about geometry, what about porn?, you ask.
"But the chief priestess, Clitorpatra (played by Diana) talked Agamemnon into a contest. If the women could outscrew that Greek leaders, they'd be given their freedom and a ship to sail to wherever they wished to go. The women won, of course. But the villainous Agamemnon broke his oath to free the priestesses. Lying on his back, panting, drained after his heroic efforts, he ordered his men to slay the women. They, however, were too exhausted to rise from the floor." - p 182
"One thing I was sure of. Lorna Mordoy had lied in her report to Simon Alliger. Take the dog license. One of the ways to find the location of a person is to check on the county or city licenses for pets and the record of the animal's vaccinations. If the subject had gotten a license or taken the pet to a veternarian, his address and time of license purchase could be determined." - p 194
Did you ever think about that? There're so many ways of tracking a person's whereabouts that it's amazing. Obviously, debit or credit card purchases are extremely traceable. These days, at least where I live, paying for parking at a meter requires entering one's car's license plate - thusly placing the car at a certain location at a certain time. Many people are probably of the opinion that if one isn't up to no good then what does it matter? Maybe only criminals care. I think otherwise, I think privacy is important - if it's NOT important then I ask for all relevant data about every single person who has access to my own data. What wd that reveal? What crimes are they up to?
Has there ever been a crime fiction novel w/o fighting in it? Not in this one, at least.
"I went backward, my arm pulling Deak with me. His revolver fell to the deck as I pulled him over the railing. I hit the water on my back. He was on top of me, his face now pressed against mine. Those long fleshy tumorous tendrils ground against my mouth. But I was so occupied with the shock of encountering him, the numbness of my left arm from the wrist up to the shoulder, and the suddenness of what had happened I didn't feel the repulsion I'd have had under other circumstances." - p 220
There are what one might call 'the usual complications':
""Then this Diana," I bent my head toward Mrs. Roger Alliger, "showed up. She was the same age, and she was a runaway, too, only they were going in different directions. The newcomer looked a lot like Diana Rolanski. Why not? She was her first cousin. Her mother—dead by then—was Mary Groat. Myrna Rolanski's sister. Mary was the newcomer's mother, and Deak Mobard was her father. The new comer's real name, I believe, was Harly Mobard."" - p 264
I'm reminded of a Spike Jones routine. All in all, I enjoyed this & even recommend it - but not to the exclusion of life itself. As much as I love fiction, I recommend going out into real life even more - but avoid the Deak Mobards of the world.
August 14, 2014
Biased review. First of all, i would give it 4 stars, except for the fact that it is set in Peoria, IL, and it is so much fun to read about your stomping grounds in a book. For those who live in big cities, this happens all the time, but for a small midwest town... Well. Fun! Anyway, this is old style pulp fiction, with a dark humor sort of like the movie Fargo. A good mystery and likable characters, and enough action to keep the story moving.
June 29, 2017
A bit all over the place and some of the humor falls flat but overall an entertaining read, particularly for readers who know Peoria and who cab recognize the literary and historical allusions that fly thick and fast. Not Farmer's best work by any stretch of the imagination but we worth reading.
November 6, 2017
Crazy, not very memorable detective story. Must have some special appeal for those that knew the city where it happens. but not for me.
November 30, 2022
Farmer brincando de Raymond Chandler, mas sem largar mão das jogadas metalinguísticas, como inserir charadas com Sherlock Holmes, Moby Dick e Tarzan no meio de uma trama rocambolesca, complicada ao ponto da paródia e muito, muito divertida.
Tom Corbie é um detetive na linha de Philip Marlowe vivendo na década de 90, com celulares, computadores e uma esposa new age capaz de tirar do sério qualquer sujeito com mais de dois neurônios, mas da qual um homem jamais largaria. Tom vive de bicos, mas mora razoavelmente bem, apesar das eventuais brigas com a vizinhança por causa de coisas triviais, como som alto no fim de semana, que ele resolve da maneira mais “fora dos eixos” possível (invadir a casa ao lado, cimentar as tomadas e inutilizar um aparelho de som sem deixar – muitas – pistas é quase digno de aplausos para qualquer um que compartilhe um condomínio com vizinhos barulhentos).
Esse cara gente boa, mas com um temperamento esquisito, é contratado para resolver um problema de herança, assassinato, abelhas e dinheiro, muito dinheiro. Moças sedutoras e dúbias? Tem. Tiroteio e pancadarias insanas? Tem também. Sexo? Olha, também tem e, para quem conhece o estilo de Farmer, já sabe que pode esperar algumas coisas meio… errr… diferentes.
Em resumo: um page turner do tipo que te faz dar risadas e ficar na ponta da cadeira. Algumas vezes é até meio nojento… mas vale cada minuto de leitura.
Só não leva cinco estrelas porque às vezes exige muito da credibilidade. Tudo e todos têm limites, até o Felipe Zé Fazendeiro.
Tom Corbie é um detetive na linha de Philip Marlowe vivendo na década de 90, com celulares, computadores e uma esposa new age capaz de tirar do sério qualquer sujeito com mais de dois neurônios, mas da qual um homem jamais largaria. Tom vive de bicos, mas mora razoavelmente bem, apesar das eventuais brigas com a vizinhança por causa de coisas triviais, como som alto no fim de semana, que ele resolve da maneira mais “fora dos eixos” possível (invadir a casa ao lado, cimentar as tomadas e inutilizar um aparelho de som sem deixar – muitas – pistas é quase digno de aplausos para qualquer um que compartilhe um condomínio com vizinhos barulhentos).
Esse cara gente boa, mas com um temperamento esquisito, é contratado para resolver um problema de herança, assassinato, abelhas e dinheiro, muito dinheiro. Moças sedutoras e dúbias? Tem. Tiroteio e pancadarias insanas? Tem também. Sexo? Olha, também tem e, para quem conhece o estilo de Farmer, já sabe que pode esperar algumas coisas meio… errr… diferentes.
Em resumo: um page turner do tipo que te faz dar risadas e ficar na ponta da cadeira. Algumas vezes é até meio nojento… mas vale cada minuto de leitura.
Só não leva cinco estrelas porque às vezes exige muito da credibilidade. Tudo e todos têm limites, até o Felipe Zé Fazendeiro.
August 31, 2012
That was weird... I liked that this book took place in Illinois. I liked some of the writing, but the majority of it was all over the place- the plot was wonky, the characters a bit one-dimensional... nothing particularly memorable here.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews