The Fortunes of Brak by John Jakes

John Jakes is well known as the best-selling author of such grand historical fiction series as the Kent Family Chronicles (The Bicentennial series), the North and South trilogy, the Crown Family Saga, and several others.  He was a perineal chart topper of the 1970s and 80s and most of his works seemed destined to be adapted as TV mini-series. But fewer people know that his writing career began in the science fiction and fantasy arena.

Brak the Barbarian is John Jakes’ tribute to the great Robert E. Howard and specifically to the Conan stories.  Jakes wrote these stories in a similar style but perhaps a little more modernized. They are slightly more politically correct than the original Conan stories with the damsels still being in distress but not always quite so dependent on the strong male to rescue them.  Evil magicians, swashbuckling sword fights, narrow escapes…you get the idea.

The Brak series includes both novels as well as short stories.  This particular title is a collection of 5 stories, all of which were first published in various magazines and anthologies:

"Devils in the Walls" (from Fantastic Stories of Imagination v. 12, no. 5, May 1963)

"Ghoul's Garden" (from Flashing Swords! #2, Sep. 1973)

"The Girl in the Gem" (from Fantastic Stories of Imagination v. 14, no. 1, Jan. 1965)

"Brak in Chains" (originally "Storm in a Bottle," from Flashing Swords! #4: Barbarians and Black Magicians, Spring 1977)

"The Mirror of Wizardry" (from Worlds of Fantasy v. 1, no. 1, Sep. 1968)

These stories are not world-changing, thought-provoking, pieces of art, nor are they meant to be. They are, however, fun stories to read and I recommend them to those who enjoy pulp-era sword and sorcery.

Poirot and Me by David Suchet

Over the past couple of years, I’ve been enjoying all of the excellent “Agatha Christie’s Poirot” television series starring David Suchet in the title role. I’ve been impressed with the overall quality of the show, most especially with the way in which he so accurately captured the ‘real” Inspector Hercule Poirot, just as Christie wrote him (as opposed to the way he is usually portrayed in a somewhat cartoonish way). I’ve also been impressed that a single actor would continue to portray the same character time after time for 25 years and 70 films, most of them two-hour feature-film quality events, covering every Poirot story (novel and short story) ever penned by Dame Agatha. So when I saw this book on the store shelves I made the very unusual decision, for me, to engage in an impulse buy.

So glad I did! I rarely read autobiographies of actors but for me, just as with so many millions of people around the world, David Suchet is Poirot. He covers a lot of ground that you might expect in this book, including the very interesting manner in which he created his version of Poirot, how he captured his look, his walk, his voice, his mustache, etc. He takes us through the seasons and the angst which he and his wife experienced through 25 years of filming the shows, never knowing at the end of each series whether or not the next would happen. Because of these gaps in filming, we get to see what projects he worked on, mostly in the theater in London, while he waited for news. One theme which I did not expect to encounter runs throughout the book: what it means to be a character actor versus a “star”. I now have a much greater appreciation for that aspect of an actor’s craft.

But the major theme of the book is the unreserved and deeply held love that David Suchet feels for the character. Just where the character stops and the actor begins is something he jokes about but his need to preserve the character and make Dame Agatha proud is the mark of true professional. For me, as a voracious reader of fiction, I doubly appreciate how he tries to stay true to the character and fight against tendencies to “update him for today’s audiences”.

This is a pleasant read, eye-opening in some respects, but fundamentally rewarding. Recommended for all fans of the television series or for those interested in the profession of acting.

Sherlock Holmes: The Crossovers Casebook - Edited by Howard Hopkins

This is a fun collection of Sherlock Holmes stories. They are all crossover cases, meaning prominent figures of fiction and history “crossover” into a Sherlock story and work with Holmes and Watson to solve a case. Guest stars include Professor Challenger, Sexton Blake, Harry Houdini, Dr. Moreau, Arsene Lupin, Lawrence of Arabia, Colonel Savage and more. Contributing authors include giants of the crossover genre like Win Scott Eckert, Will Murray, and Joe Gentile. 

Most of the stories are written along the traditional Sherlockian lines but the final one, “The Adventure of the Lost Specialist” penned by Christopher Sequeira strays into the realm of the weird and strange. Nothing wrong with that and I did like it, but it seems a bit out of place among the rest. My favorite story in the collection is the humorous yarn entitled, “The Haunted Manor” written by Howard Hopkins and featuring Calamity Jane.

I read these over time, not back to back which is the best way for me to avoid burnout on one particular genre. As with all anthologies some stories are more enjoyable than others, but I genuinely liked every tale presented.  Some authors were new to me and so, of course, I now have more stories to seek out.

Home is the Prisoner by Jean Potts

Jim Singley has just been released from prison after serving a sentence for manslaughter. In deciding to return to the small middle-America community where everybody knows he killed his business partner, he knows it won’t be easy. As for the community at large and especially for those close to Jim and what happened, they can only wonder one thing. Why would Jim come back here? It must be for some sort of unfinished business.

That’s the mystery at the heart of this novel by Jean Potts, an accomplished writer of numerous short stories in addition to some fourteen novels published in the 1950’s-60’s. She is known for her characterizations, especially in small towns and that is clearly evident here. The plot unfolds through the eyes of a handful of people in Jim’s orbit, shifting the perspective and letting readers in on their own secrets and theories. From early on in the novel, one gets the impression that Jim was likely falsely imprisoned but at the same time it remains quite possible he is an evil man intent on revenge. The solution is not evident until the very end.

By today’s standards this is not a swiftly moving narrative. There is a lot of thoughtful perspective from quite a few characters, much of it inwardly focused. The novel is well-written and I can see why the author won the Edgar award for best first novel for Go, Lovely Rose.

The Tin Lizzie Troop by Glendon Swarthout

During the Mexican-American border campaign of 1916 during which 100,000 national guardsmen were called up to defend the US against raiding Mexican bandits, an incident took place that resulted in the first ever mechanized infantry engagement. This novel, by American writer Glendon Swarthout, takes a humorous (and fictionalized) view of that event, resulting in a fun read indeed.

General Blackjack Pershing’s fruitless chase of Pancho Villa took all the headlines at the time but here we follow Lt. Stanley Dinkle, commander of Patrol Post No. 2 based out of Ft. Bliss. A rotation of National Guardsman perform a tour of duty for a month at a time under his command and this time it is six members of the Philadelphia Light Horse. Officially they are national guard but in reality they are the sons of wealthy hoity-toity military men’s club members. Naturally, they expect their tour of duty to be nothing but fun and games. Among their gear are polo mallets, a Victrola phonograph, and two Ford Model T automobiles.

When Lt Dinkle is granted leave in El Paso for a weekend, he leaves one of the six men in charge and of course everything goes to Hell. They are raided by Mexican bandits, their horses stolen, and a local homely maiden is kidnapped. The very honor of the Philadelphia Light Horse is at stake! Against all orders, they cross the Rio Grande and charge toward the bandits. However, they soon learn that Model T’s racing across the desert tend to encounter all sorts of mechanical problems that horses do not.

This is the funniest novel I have read in a long time. Nearly every line, whether dialog or not is humorous in one way or another. It combines farcical situations with some surprising pathos. And it also contains some shockingly violent scenes. It’s like reading a Monty Python skit as directed by Quentin Tarantino. A movie version was almost made staring Paul Newman. Too bad it wasn’t. I would have paid to see that.