Tentatively, Convenience's Reviews > Death Cell

After lumping together all the Goulart bks I've read &, essentially, giving them all the same review & 3 stars I read 2 more & was reminded of why I've read so many of them. Now I've read ANOTHER ONE (How many of them ARE there?!) & I feel a little bad for writing him off so easily. SO, I've given this one 4 STARS. Ron Goulart, if you're still alive, it does seem like you shd be better known.

This one has cat & lizard people, a common feature in his bks, & lots of lustful-man-obsessing-over-breasts jokes.. & if it stopped there it wd be hard for me in good conscience to give this a good review. HOWEVER, like any pulp novel, this is a fast-moving action plot full of twists & turns. It's also got lots of imagination in general: things like a robotic dog that dispenses soy-dogs out of one ear while dispensing the bun out of the other.

Goulart is wildly funny & inspired & there's plenty in the plot to keep me interested. I read this one in a day. But.. I hold back on giving him a completely one-hundred percent positive review b/c there's a depth lacking: He's no Nabokov, he's no Dick; the bks always read like things written quickly to get what was probably a small financial return to enable him to live long enuf to write another quickie. They're inspired, they're very inspired.. but they're not exactly profound. Still, the parody is broad & he touches on the mainstream as well as alterni-culture in a fairly thorough way. & this was one of my favorites.