The Automatic Detective: Review

This is what I've been looking for. Good pulpy detective fiction with a main character who's a robot built to take over the world and his pal a talking Gorilla? How the hell could I not love this?

The Automatic Detective follows the story of our hero, Mack Megaton (again, look at this name! Genius!), an eight-foot tall sapient robot who has developed a glitch in his programming, and instead of taking over the world for his creator, the evil and insane Professor Megalith, he rebelled, and applied for citizenship in the home of the weird, Empire City.

Empire City is every 1950s futurist's dream come to life. Cars are no more, replaced with helo-cars, walking cars, jumping cars, basically you name a method of locomotion that doesn't evolve four-wheeled travel then Empire City uses it. Science reigns supreme, with the Learned Council overseeing the regulation of it and the rest of the laws in the city. Weird science abounds, radiation is so prevalent that mutations are just something you deal with, and robots are a part of everyday life.

Which is why Mack wants to make an honest go of it. So the Council gives him the benefit of the doubt, and he is put on close watch until he demonstrates that he's not going to go crazy and try to bring mankind to its knees. So he gets a job to pay for his electric bill as a taxi driver, and every day he goes next door to his neighbor's apartment so they can tie his bowtie for him (which is apparently something he wasn't really designed for).

Which is when things get messy. The family is kidnapped, and he's taken it upon himself to find them no matter the cost.

This book is pretty fantastic. It has all the conventions of classic noir-detective stories, with a femme fatale, mouthy sidekick, and hero-detective with a devil may care attitude and nothing left to lose. Martinez even nails the style:

She had long legs that went on forever, circling the curve of space and meeting themselves back at the end of eternity. And her face: it belonged in movies. Monster movies. The kind where some thing with six eyes and a lamprey mouth sucks teenagers' brains.

A. Lee Martinez did a really great job with the story, crafting a mystery that kept you wondering but was also fast paced and filled with robot-pounding-action, The Automatic Detective is an instant recommendation for anyone who thinks that Dashiell Hammet, Terry Pratchett and Isaac Asimov could combine to form some sort of Voltron-esque story of pulpy fun and just pure awesomeness.

My only complaint with the book is that it's perfectly set up for a sequel, or even a series, but so far there has been no word of any. Please, Mr. Martinez, please return to the world of Mac Megaton and Empire City and show us what happens next. I'd be forever in your debt.

Rating: 9/10

the Black Dahlia: Review

"Cherchez La Femme, Bucky. Remember that." The Black Dahlia, by James Ellroy was written in 1987, forty years after the gruesome crime known by the same name. I'll do my best to review the book without spoilers, but since it's based on an actual event, I won't worry too much about that end of it for the intrepid reader.

If you're not familiar with the story, I'll try to briefly run down the plot: the Black Dahlia follows detectives and ex-boxers Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert (our protagonist and narrator) and his partner Lee Blanchard. Together, they are caught up in the mystery of the Black Dahlia, the most notorious and gruesome murder in Californian history, revolving around the horrifying murder of Elizabeth Short, who's corpse was found on January 15, 1947, nude and severed in two with her internal organs removed. She had obviously been tortured, and with this mystery the lives f Bleichert and Blanchard are forever changed. 

James Ellroy is a legend in the field of crime fiction, a giant among boys. His prose is exceptional, and his plot building wonderful. Recently I had read (and reviewed here) Raymond Chandler's the Long Goodbye, what is typically known as his seminal work. Before that, and before I had begun writing reviews here, I read Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest, which I personally preferred. Both of these books were written by the masters of the genre, but in my personal opinion they pale in comparison to the work that Ellroy has accomplished in the Black Dahlia.

The plot isn't action packed, but unlike much of Hammett and Chandler's works, it is still maintains a brisk pace despite the long time frame that it takes place over. Things happen, one after another. Some are obviously connected to the overarching plot, while others seem like side adventures. Ellroy does a masterful job of interweaving these disparate events and plots, seeding both "vital and incidental" (as Holmes would put it) points of data along the way. Unlike the Long Goodbye, you're given all of the information that is required of solving the crime at the same time that our Detective is given it, and as such are able to actually solve the mystery at hand at the same pace that he does.

As I said before, the prose is exceptional, and always left me wanting to read on. That said, this book is absolutely not for everyone. It is graphic in the extreme, both detailing the mutilations that Short had been dealt, and the many sexual acts depicted throughout the narrative. Ellroy explores the very worst of human nature as Bleichert explores the dark corners of Los Angeles in the late 40s in search of the murderer, and for his own purpose. Needless to say, this is not a book for children or the squeamish. Though, perhaps somewhat strangely I found this to be less depressing and a much more fun read than Mockingjay.

Despite this, I found it to be an exciting and fascinating read that took one of the greatest crimes of the century and, while fictionalizing it quite a bit, did so in a way that kept me from really caring that none of this happened. I believed in the ending, and plausibility, in the end, is really one of the most important things to have in a mystery novel. Ellroy, in my mind, has absolutely established himself as one of the preeminent authors of crime and noir fiction, and I am really looking forward to reading the rest of his "L.A. Quartet."

Rating: 8/10