Whispering Nickel Idols

Unlike some of these other people, I actually just started reading the Garret series last year, I stumbled on them and then ended up buying the whole series. I love them, I love how they read, so easy and I get right into them and then when I'm done, I'm dissapointed that it's over. I hope he keeps writing this series because it's like an old friend you can't wait to see.

I don't know what it is about this guy Glen Cook, but I just cannot get enough of him. Any character who claims beer is his favorite food and redheads are his favorite sport is my kind of guy. If someone told me it was possible to blend the fantasy lit world of elves and fairies with the Dectective Noir world of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, i would laugh in their face. However, Glen Cook does exactly that. And it works. I have laughed my way through all eleven Garrett books and I can't wait for more. All I can say is I hope Mr. Cook considers taking some more time off from his job at the General Motors light duty truck plant and writing us some more Garrett. I cannot get enough.

It feels like it has been forever since the last Garrett, P.I. novel. Glen Cook, who has some truly dark fantasy series to his credit has always used this series, starring a mundane tough guy detective (think Archie Goodwin) and his partner The Dead Man (think an undead Nero Wolf in an elephant suit), as his lighter side. Garrett is usually the butt of the jokes (both his mouth and his romantic abilities keep him in hot water) and The Dead Man provides both magical and mental assitance (as well as a good deal of sarcasm. The result is a steady stream of adventure, crisis, and smirks. Garrett's problem this time is that he woke up from a perfectly good night of sleep to discover a child called Penny Dreadful has convinced Dean, the housekeeper, to provide a home for a bucket of unusual cats. In short order a number of people (mostly in plaid pants) are trying very hard to kill Garrett. This serves as a distraction from the job Garrett has been hired to do - find out how crime czar Chodo Contague became a vegetable. Making this a bit complicated is Belinda Contague, a beautiful, intelligent, warmhearted psychotic with a yen for the detective. But that's life in TunFaire. In case this sounds too tepid there is a family of alcoholic pixies, a homicidal vegetarian elf, a born again blacksmith, and a really deadly redhead in the mix, and they are Garrett's friends. You don't want to know about the bad guys or the not so bad guys. The Dead Man, who prefers to sleep is woken up by the chaos and the only thing worse than not being helped by a four hundred year dead corpse is being helped by one that thinks you are a congenital idiot. These tales are unalloyed fun. Cook often ventures into serious matters, but only for short visits. One of Garrett's weaknesses is a streak of integrity that often gets him into bad situations that he should have lied his way out of, but he is no angel. While this is fantasy, even the exotic creatures have a touch of believability to them. Bad puns, bad neighborhoods, and crazy citizens aside, TunFaire is still the place to be when you need a change of pace.

Okay, I confess, I bought this volume based on the cover art and the blurb on the back. I was trapped in an airport and had nothing to read (quelle horreur!), so I grabbed this volume because I liked the weirdness it seemed to promise. It was an excellent choice. I was lucky to "chance" into something this good. The novel is strong and intelligent. Better still, it is really funny. The characters, human, extra-human and otherwise, are fun and interesting. I enjoyed it mightily. The blurb on the cover of my copy of the book calls the series "Fantasy Noir." I suppose in one way, that's a moderately appropriate assessment; Cook is certainly familiar with the conventions of the Noir genre, but that isn't really the direction he is going in this volume, Whispering Nickel Idols is actually a fantasy echo of the Rex Stout turn of mind. What I'm saying is that the novel is a Noir/Cosy Mystery hybrid (mostly Cosy) with fantasy elements thrown in. This is excellent...I like all three turns of mind. The fantasy elements are really the fun bit, since a lot of the character color of the vignettes is based on the character styles of the varying "others" who inhabit the fantasy. Regardless, the reason I mentioned Rex Stout is because the novel very much takes its primary cue from the Nero Wolfe stories. Cook's narrator, Garret, P.I. is far more like the amiable Archie Goodwin than "Noir," tough guy Mike Hammer or Sam Spade, and the literary allusion and "wiseacre" attitude displayed by the amanuensis is pure Goodwin. Also, just as in the Nero Wolfe stories, the principal of the firm (The Dead Man) is immobile and actually does the brainwork while the narrator is really the prime legman and personality. The Dead Man even sends Garret out to collect the persons he wants to interview, just as Wolfe sends Goodwin out. The real giveaway though, was the Dead Man's "speech patterns," which are pure Nero Wolfe. This is not a criticism, nor is it intended to be, I enjoyed the volume a great deal...it a far stronger and friendlier Wolfe pastiche than any of the "authorized" attempts to create posthumus Rex Stout-styled mysteries since his death in the 1970's. The strength of the novel is in its wit, but there are plenty of broad physical slapstick jokes that liven things up. This is a solid novel and is entertaining enough to even please the "Fantasy Challenged" of the audience. The closest I can come to a criticism of the book is that it seems to be a mystery in search of a plot: until very near the end I wondered just what it was Garret was supposed to be investigating. It's not that the story is short on crime (small "c"), it's more that it is short of A Crime (caps). Not to worry though--the situations that Cook sweeps us through function nicely as self-sufficient vignettes. This is the good stuff...

I thought that this novel went back to the roots of Garrett; the last two were less in line with the earlier novels in the series. Yes, he's getting old and yes, TunFaire is a-changin', but there seemed to be more "head-tapping" and gritty language in this than the deity ridden Pewter and "visitor" laden Lead. I was a little scared at first that the novel would turn out like Lead when they started talking of Spontanious Human Combustion. I was sure that Big Foot or Nessie did it. This went back to the roots of a complex twisting whodunit that I've known Cook for. I like that he relied on beings within this realm to be the perpitrators. I love Garrett Novels and this is no exception. Looking forward to stiffling a yelp when I discover the next Garrett novel in a bookstore within the next few years....