‘Switch Bitch’ by Roald Dahl
The name Roald Dahl is now so firmly associated with children’s literature that it’s easy to forget he spent most of his 48 year career writing adult fiction, only really knuckling down to the kids’ stuff in the 70s and 80s. Such is the desire of publishers for new children’s material that some of his adult books have been repackaged for teens. Switch Bitch is not one of them – and if you’ve ever read it you’ll know exactly why! When we read these days that well-known short story writers of the 50s and 60s had stories published in Playboy, it often comes … Continue reading ‘Switch Bitch’ by Roald Dahl
‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’ by Alexander Freed
I almost didn’t think there was going to be a novelisation of Rogue One, it was so late hitting the shops here in the UK. The movie had been out a couple of weeks before it appeared. Anyway, now that it is here; is it any good? Alan Dean Foster’s novelisation of The Force Awakens was a hard act to follow; capturing the spirit of 1977 and reminding us all why we love Star Wars so much. Well, I’m pleased to re-port that it is very good indeed. Alexander Freed has a background in the Star Wars expanded universe novels and I was afraid that this would … Continue reading ‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’ by Alexander Freed
‘The QE2 is Missing’ by Harry Harrison
Harry Harrison may be best known as a writer of science fiction, but he has also written the odd straight thriller over the years, In fact, one of his first published novels was as a ghost writer for Leslie Charteris on Vendetta for the Saint. 22 years later, along came The QE2 is Missing, a novel very much in the mould of the kind of hard-edged paperback thriller that you might see jammed into a wire rack in the local Post Office throughout the 1970s. The story starts exactly as it says on the cover, with the famous luxury liner having dropped … Continue reading ‘The QE2 is Missing’ by Harry Harrison
‘Perchance to Dream’ by Charles Beaumont
In all fairness, Charles Beaumont should be up amongst Ray Bradbury and Richard Matheson as one of the great sci-fi / fantasy writers of his generation; but sadly, debilitating illness brought an early end to both his life and his writing career. Fortunately, we have a popular reminder of his work in the many episodes of the original Twilight Zone that he adapted from his short stories. But although his many episodes of The Twilight Zone are regularly seen around the world, the stories that inspired them seldom see print. Until now. Perchance to Dream is a new and long-overdue collection of Charles Beaumont’s best … Continue reading ‘Perchance to Dream’ by Charles Beaumont
‘I’ll Cross That Palm When I Come To It’ by Audley Southcott
Public Eye was a long-running ITV series from the late-60s to mid-70s, starring Alfred Burke as the misanthropic loner Frank Marker. Unlike most other detective series of the era, it eschewed car chases and shoot-outs in favour of an often grim real world approach. Cross That Palm When I Come To It was the second of only two spin-off novels from the series and was written by Audley Southcott who, although a TV writer and producer, never wrote for the actual TV series. The first thing that strikes you about Cross That Palm When I Come To It is that it’s pushing barriers that a … Continue reading ‘I’ll Cross That Palm When I Come To It’ by Audley Southcott
‘In the Blood’ by Jenny T. Colgan
To tie in with its 2005 revival of Doctor Who, the BBC launched not one but two lines of spin-off novels to accompany the series. There was a standard range of workmanlike adventures by reliable but lesser-known authors and a ‘premium’ range of big impressive hardbacks by big impressive authors with names you might recognise from the best sellers list. It hasn’t always been a successful arrangement; Alistair Reynolds and Stephen Baxter turned in wonderful Doctor Who novels, whereas fantasy legend Michael Moorcock wrote a great Michael Moorcock novel that seemed to bear little relation to Doctor Who. Jenny T. Colgan wouldn’t have … Continue reading ‘In the Blood’ by Jenny T. Colgan
‘Trouble is my Business’ by Raymond Chandler
A while ago I started making my way through Raymond Chandler’s excellent Philip Marlowe novels in order. Sadly for this blog, I completed the last full length novel Playback shortly before starting to write reviews for Hot Bullets. It’s not all over for Philip Marlowe however, as I still had the short story collection Trouble is my Business to read. I say short stories, they’re probably more properly defined as ‘novellas’, but I detest using that word, so to me they’ll always be – fairly long – short stories. The first of the four stories in this collection is Trouble is my Business, from which it … Continue reading ‘Trouble is my Business’ by Raymond Chandler
‘Icerigger’ by Alan Dean Foster
I first read Icerigger 30 years ago, when I was 15 and Alan Dean Foster’s books were widely available in my local W.H. Smith’s. It’s part of a trilogy and, although I’ve had the third book The Deluge Drivers for a number of years, I’ve only recently acquired a copy of the middle book Mission to Moulokin. I couldn’t really pick up where I left off in 1986 – my memory isn’t that good – so I decided this was an ideal time to re-read Icerigger and review it for Space Probe 1. Icerigger starts with a bungled kidnapping, as criminals on a shuttle craft attempt to snatch multi-millionaire Hellespont … Continue reading ‘Icerigger’ by Alan Dean Foster
‘Psycho’ by Robert Bloch
My wife and I were recently enjoying the first series of Bates Motel, when it suddenly occurred to me that, although I’d seen Psychomany times, its sequels of varying quality and even the monumentally redundant Gus van Sant remake; I’d never read the book that started it all – Robert Bloch’s Psycho. It took me a few months to get around to buying it, of course, but when I did I found that I literally couldn’t put it down. I raced through the book in a couple of days and the fact that I was so familiar with the plot never really … Continue reading ‘Psycho’ by Robert Bloch
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