Christmas Free Books

I wanted to list some Christmas books that are available free online--audio versions too.

The Christmas Angel (audiobook here) is generally comparable to A Chritsmas Carol, but the Scrooge is an embittered old woman who decides to test the Christmas spirit on Christmas Eve by dropping childhood toys out her window for passersby. (She had meant to simply burn them.) Will she see honesty and altruism or greed and deceit? The trials seem to confirm her cynicism, but one of the remaining items, an angel that topped a childhood Christmas tree, becomes the Christmas Angel and shows her the rest of the stories--the events she didn't see. The theology is a little quirky in spots, but no worse than that of A Christmas Carol. And the reader for the audio version is especially good for this kind of work. It's short--under two hours for the audiobook.

A couple of stories by Kate Douglas Wiggin, best known for Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm:

The Old Peabody Pew (audiobook here) is about an aborted romance between a small-town failure who left to make his fortune and the girl he left behind. It's rather low-key but moving.

The Romance of a Christmas Card (audiobook here) concerns a pair of Christmas cards produced by a minister's wife and their unforeseen effects.

Both stories are a bit slow-moving at first by modern standards, but they're worth the time.

(Technically there's also The Birds' Christmas Carol--audiobook here or here. It's an engaging story of the doomed-pious-waif variety. Such things don't bother me as much now as they used to, but I thought I should warn you.)

If you don't mind a Catholic touch--and I hope you don't--there are two short stories by Francis J. Finn (audio):

"Looking for Santa Claus" in My Strange Friend (audio version is 17 here) has innocent, pious munchkins inadvertently overcoming evil.

"The Wager of Gerald O’Rourke: A Christmas Story"--no e-text, but it's number 26 on the same page--involve's a sleepyhead's bet about getting up early and how it changes some lives for the better. This is a good intro to Finn.

On a purely humorous level, there's "The Thin Santa Claus" by Ellis Parker Butler. There are audio versions, but this is dialect humor, which requires specialized skills. You can try these, but I haven't heard them and can't vouch for them (you will have to search the pages):

Version 1
Version 2

The Crevice: A Free Book review

I've pretty much decided not to bother with negative reviews, except that I may occasionally list free books worth avoiding along with a quick explanation of why.

The Crevice (audiobook here) by William J. Burns and Isabel Ostrander is exceptional, however, so I'll explain why in a sense it's a good example of a bad example. For a start, a quick perusal of the audiobook summary and the article on William J. Burns should give you a justifiable suspicion: yes, this is an ego trip for Burns, who, as Henry Blaine ("the Master Mind," yet!), is even more heroic than he thinks, if possible.

Now, that's annoying, but what tempted me to stop almost as soon as I started was the stereotypical portrayal of a minister as obsequious and hypocritical. It's possible to have such a character without stooping to stereotype--for example, the Rev. William Collins in Pride and Prejudice. And he's present at the end, too, just to reinforce the point that he still hasn't learned anything and is a far less noble character than Blaine, who has magnanimously chosen to reform a minor criminal the reverend would have preferred to rot in prison. And in case we're too oblivious to comprehend an already ham-handed bit of propaganda, it's spelled out for us:

"If I'd gone to any Sunday school he presided over, when I was a
kiddie, I'd have been a train-robber now!" he observed darkly.

There are of course some perfunctory references to God, but Blaine himself is too modern for that. But what is his track record, even taking the story on its own terms?

1. He manages to cow a subordinate who has an attack of conscience (he's called on to lie a lot and betray confidences) with the observation that, sure, the man is betraying an innocent girl, but Blaine's own client is an innocent girl who has been betrayed. So two wrongs do make a right, apparently.

2. He talks a woman into abandoning her scruples against a villain's advances, the better to obtain information from him. This leads to considerable tragedy--a pair of deaths, among other things--and he doesn't even get much information out of it. Them's the breaks, though, and the silly minister probably couldn't have done it.

And I'll skip some essentially criminal activities such as chloroforming a night watchman and burgling a safe to get evidence--that was occasionally done at this period, sometimes even by cops, it seems.

In short, Blaine came across to me at least as a rather repugnant object, and that put me off the story. But the mystery itself is somewhat pedestrian. I figured out most of the mystery easily enough as information became available, and what wasn't fairly obvious came across as hokum. Oddly, we don't even find out what "the crevice" is until late in the story, and it's not convincing either. (I supposed it would be the villains' lair.)

About the only point of interest is a cryptographic anticipation of Leet:

"...we find that '3' when viewed from the
under side of the paper will look very much like an English _E_; 7
like _T_; 9 like _P_; 2 like _S_, and so forth."

On the other hand, if you're interested to see how far back attitudes like Blaine's go--well, they go back beyond this book, but this is a good example of the preening self-assurance of an early modern thinker, blind to his faults and contradictions.

The Planet Strappers: A Free Book review

The Planet Strappers (free audiobook here) by Raymond Z. Gallun is a tale of the awkward age of space exploration from the awkward age of sci-fi. We were beginning to realize that maybe it wasn't quite so simple after all, that Mars probably didn't have any canals or ancient sages, that Venus was more hellhole than paradise.

A bit of a disappointment, really. I think that's why there's so much interest in retro science-fantasy where it really is as easy to get into space as the comic strips implied.

Anyway, in The Planet Strappers, the Solar System is still being explored: men have personally visited everything within Jupiter's orbit, and probes have reached much of the rest. Mars used to have an advanced civilization, but it and a rival civilization from what is now the asteroids wiped each other out, and now only plants rule the Red Planet.

It's the tech angle that I found interesting. Space travel (beyond escaping earth's gravity well) is managed on the cheap, thanks to Archers, space suits so thoroughly self-sufficient that they double as spaceships for fairly short trips, and bubs, or space bubbles, which are essentially large, spinnable plastic bags with ion drives that can take you from planet to planet in a few months. I couldn't help thinking what a little genetic engineering and nanotechnology could do to make bubs self-maintaining. The main problem (outside of shifting orbits, which I think would take more power than Gallun allowed for) would be psychological: even in a convoy of bubs where you could visit or call others, the isolation would get to most people. Still, it's an attractive idea, if only for fiction.

As to the story itself, it concerns a group of would-be space travelers who are more diverse than the crew of the Enterprise: woman who wants to make it in a man's world? Check! Black guy? Yup. Hispanic? ¡Por supuesto! Jock? Take two; they're big. Mama's boy? Don't make me cry! Rich kid? Ka-ching! Rebel without a clue? Why, soit'n'y! We've even got a handicapped guy--two if you count the innumerate goof who needs mathematical and other nursemaiding. Against all odds--well, except for the rich kid, whose odds are pretty good--they get a shot at the Big Vacuum, though there are washouts along the way--and some surprise returns. They go their separate ways, and we get a tour of space with a few of them.

It's a good yarn on the whole--a transition from the early gee-whiz sci-fi into the more realistic kind.

The Planet Strappers
E-book
Audiobook

Let 'Em Breathe Space: A Free Book Review

Let 'Em Breathe Space (free audiobook here) is a novella by Lester del Rey. It's a space-borne murder mystery in which an expedition to Saturn finds itself plagued by potentially harmful accidents and eventually a series of murders and the destruction of plants that maintain the air supply. Who would be foolish enough to endanger the entire ship? Why would anyone be so desperate to abort the trip to Saturn?

The mystery is fairly good, though I had a general idea who had done it (but not exactly why) somewhat before the narrator. In addition to the mystery proper, there is the problem of getting enough breathable air to reach any destination but the grave--the alternative being a death lottery to cut down the number aboard ship to something the remaining plants can support. Even if the narrator, a former engineer washed up by an accident and reduced to a glorified handyman, can find the murderer, there's still the matter of the missing oxygen.

I was surprised, even given del Rey's gifts, at how well the story worked--not only as a mystery, but as a kind of engineering problem and even (in small part) as a kind of romance. Let 'Em Breathe Space is short--just under two hours--and would go quite well with chili or burritos and popcorn. (That will more or less make sense after you've read it.)

Again, that's

Let 'Em Breathe Space
E-book
Audiobook

The Shadow of the Rope: A Free Book Review

"The marriage that I propose to you," continued Steel, "is simply the most convenient form of friendship of which I can think. I want to be your friend; indeed, that much I mean to be, if necessary, in spite of you. I was interested in your case, so I came up to hear your trial. I was more interested in your trial, but most interested of all in yourself. There, indeed, the word is too weak; but I will not vex your spirit with a stronger. My attraction you know; my determination you know; even the low wiles to which your pride reduced me, even my dodging and dogging, have been quite openly admitted to you on the first reasonable opportunity. ... What I can do, however," and Steel bent further forward, with eyes that held Rachel's in their spell; "what I can do, and will, is to go back with a lady who shall be my wife in name, my daughter in effect. We should, I trust, be the best of friends; but I will give you my word, and not only my word but my bond, that we never need be anything more."

This is the strange proposal that confronts Rachel Minchen, just acquitted by jury of murdering her husband, but considered guilty by practically everyone else in Britain, in The Shadow of the Rope (free audiobook here), by E. W. Hornung. A mysterious stranger—a rich, older man named Steel—watched the trial and offered Mrs. Minchen his assistance, which she spurned until the full horror of her desperate situation drove her to accept.

Who is he, really? Why is he interested in her, and what connection did he have with her husband and perhaps with his murder? And who did kill him, anyway? Steel is polite to Rachel, but there is a gulf between them, and sometimes he seems curiously unconcerned about her even as he has expressed or demonstrated attentiveness.

It isn't until Rachel's secret past (and perhaps Steel's) begins to come out that a friend, a writer, undertakes a proper investigation into the murder, about which Steel is not just uninterested but defiant, daring him to find the truth.

This is quite a good story on the whole. There are two things that bother me, though they are fairly minor.

First, only an idiot would think Rachel guilty. She had quarreled with her husband and was on the brink of returning to Australia when he was killed: why should she kill him, under the circumstances? And if she did kill him, wouldn't she realize how damning her preparations to leave would look? Someone tried (incompetently) to conceal the murder and make it look like the work of thieves; if that was her doing, she should have trusted to the deception and (again) not continued her preparations for departure. And then there's her decision to visit a sick friend when she should have been either fleeing or doing a better job covering up the crime. It's fairly obvious that she didn't know about the murder until well after the fact.

Second, we are told not to pity a certain character. Rubbish! Not to pity that character is to be a jerk. The character's effective end is in my opinion undeserved, and pity is deserved.

Otherwise, it's a good story that will puzzle and mislead the reader until the end.

Once again, that's

The Shadow of the Rope
E-book
Audiobook

Everybody's Lonesome: A Free Book Review

I'm not entirely sure why I like Everybody's Lonesome (audiobook here) by Clara E. Laughlin. Technically, it makes some points that any relatively thoughtful person already knows, and it is a bit of a shaggy dog story. But some things bear repetition, and especially these days when there's so much demonizing of differences--anyone who disagrees with you is therefore evil and stupid--it's good to stress commonality.

The story involves the development of Mary Alice, a small-town girl who feels unpopular and uninteresting, who nonetheless finds romance and importance (chatting with the King of England!) by learning some basic secrets of life from her godmother.

Success is possible for anyone, according to this story, though not necessarily wealth or fame, simply by understanding people. (Indeed, a wealthy man seeks out the godmother and eventually Mary Alice herself purely because they are restful and invigorating companions.)

This is a short work--the audiobook is under an hour and a half--but it manages to be inspirational in the general sense and a good story. It's worth a look, and the audiobook is well above average and thus worth a listen.

Everybody's Lonesome
E-book
Audiobook

I know this is a short review; I'm not yet sure what I'll do next. I should probably get back to Dark World and probably will. But Wednesday will be busy, and I'm not sure what my schedule will be. Also, I'd like to do generalized reviews of certain authors.

The Frozen Pirate: A Free Book Review

The Frozen Pirate (audiobook here) by W. Clark Russell is an odd item. Written in 1887, it has a sci-fi element rather unusual for the time and even for the author, though Russell did write horror stories.

The story begins with a terrible storm and a kamikaze iceberg wiping out a ship and leaving the narrator adrift in a lifeboat in antarctic waters. He encounters a massive island of ice and goes ashore, where he eventually discovers a pirate ship run aground some distance from the water. The ship includes a generous helping of Frozen Pirate (tm)--heat 'em and serve!

Mostly by accident, our hero manages to revive one of the pirates--they've been in deep freeze for just under fifty years, so they're still good.

Sort of good.

Kind of amoral to evil, really. This is a realistic pirate, you see, and while he's willing to help the narrator get the ship back in the water, if possible, there's treasure aboard, and he finds the math of splitting it all in half a little too daunting and has an idea for avoiding the trouble.

So the narrator's early problems of loneliness and surviving the elements unassisted become the problems of obnoxious companionship and surviving its dangers. And then there's the task of getting the ship safely launched before the northward-bound island breaks up and takes the ship with it.

There are two negatives that I should mention. Writers were completists at this point, and the narrative continues well beyond the point where a modern writer would stop. I myself would simply relegate the closing chapters to a brief epilog. Also, while it is worth explaining how he gets the ship to England and disposed of the treasure, it's rather annoying that he goes from being fairly moral and ethical to wanting to dodge the standard procedures that would have left him with little of the treasure. He turns a bit pirate himself, and I'm not sure the irony is intentional.

Still, the idea is a good one, and if you're used to the period, you'll find the book worth reading. The twist in the pirate's fate is fairly ingenious, if not altogether original today.

A note about the audiobook: there are several readers, which is usually a bad thing. What's worse, there are a number of frequent mispronunciations that I at least found painful. In case you don't know it, the Thames, the river that passes through London, is pronounced "Tim's"; it rhymes with "gyms," not "James." So I don't really recommend the audiobook, though it's otherwise a good way of getting through a rather long story.

The Frozen Pirate
E-book
Audiobook

The Middle Temple Murder: A Free Book Review

The Middle Temple Murder (audiobook here) by J.S. Fletcher is a classic mystery wherein journalist Frank Spargo attempts to solve the murder of an initially unknown elderly man in the Middle Temple Lane, where lawyers hung out back then.

This isn't the sort of mystery where you can match wits with the detective and generally have all the relevant details at your disposal. These are deep waters, Watson, and you get to follow Spargo as he delves ever deeper. You can can try to figure things out as quickly as Spargo, but that's about it. You'll be quite far in before you can even make a guess at who committed the murder, and actual certainty probably won't hit you any earlier than it does Spargo. It does all make sense--even the surprise bits are reasonable in retrospect. The last chapter seems a bit rushed, but I can understand not wanting to linger over the ending, and he does tie up the loose ends, for the most part, though I would have like to see what happened with a kind of secondary villain near the end. I doubt his position was quite as impregnable as he claimed: at least here in the US, some of his actions would have been felonies, and a few others might have been as well.

In any case you'll mostly be along for the ride. It is an engaging ride, however, and you can learn a bit about England nearly a century ago.

A note on the audiobook: the quality is average, better than some I've encountered lately, so it's a good way to get acquainted with J. S. Fletcher, a largely forgotten author whose work deserves better. I'll definitely check out some of his other books and report back; if you're curious, you can find e-books here and audiobooks here.

And again, that's

The Middle Temple Murder
E-book
Audiobook

The Cinder Pond: A Free Book Review

The Cinder Pond (audiobook here) by Carroll Watson Rankin, differs considerably from Dandelion Cottage, though both involve (at least initially) architectural oddities.

The story opens with a splash as a boy accidentally plumbs the depths of Lake Michigan and is rescued by a girl who lives in a ramshackle building on a disused bit of pier. Humiliated, he trudges home and at least some of the truth comes out. But that story element soon goes into cold storage, and the reader will likely forget about it.

It does introduce our main character, Jeanne, the girl who lives on the pier. Her father is of French (ultimately Huguenot) origins, now eking out a living as a fisherman. Her mother is conveniently dead--conveniently for the story, I mean; it doesn't help Jeanne at all. Mom died of some illness, and Dad thought he was going to check out too, so when a small family took him and baby Jeanne in, he decided to marry the daughter of the clan to give Jeanne a mother. Unfortunately, everyone was taken in: Dad was not rich, as his new family supposed, and the new family was more obnoxious than he had realized. So Jeanne gets a friendly but utterly lazy step-mother and eventually a bunch of half-siblings.

Finally her father decides she is in a dead-end position, and he takes her to her rich grandfather, who disapproved of her parents' marriage. Is the grandfather a stern sort who can't help unbending and taking an interest in his granddaughter? Does she have to cope with obnoxious relatives?

What do you think?

Anyway, revelations are revealed and Stuff Happens, some of it rather sad.

Overall, I found The Cinder Pond weaker than Dandelion Cottage, which has a stronger focus. It builds better; events and people here are sometimes rushed on and off stage, and certain loose ends should have been tidied up, in my view. Also, the set-up for the ending is telegraphed a bit too much. It would have been better to share in Jeanne's surprise.

Still, there are some good characters here--Jeanne herself, for the most part, and her friend the Captain, who's actually the best part of the story, in my opinion. It's not a classic, but it is a good read in general.

The Cinder Pond:
E-text
Audiobook

Flood Tide: a Free Book review

Flood Tide by Sara Ware Bassett (audiobook here) is the story of an elderly, eccentric tinkerer (Willie Spence) who tinkers with more than just gadgets. He's fix-it man to a small New England town almost a century ago, and he keeps getting "ketched by an idee" for some new contraption. But he also tries to fix some romances along the way, and they work out pretty well.

There are some things that are never spelled out--where does Willie's income come in? He's far from rich, but he has enough to get by on--he and live-in housekeeper Celestina Morton. Contributions from people he's helped out? Perhaps.

Willie's Panglossian faith in the basic goodness of people seems contradicted by the behavior of a former friend turned rapid viper, but Willie remains relatively serene. You'd think a tinkerer would realize the value of an adjustment, such as whacking the jerk with a wrench upside the head. "Straighten up, y' kooky ol' coot!" But that would detract from the generic inspirational preachment at the end.

Theologically, this is a bit on the brainless fluff side: though there are specifically Christian references, there are also references to "the gods"; there is also the contradictory optimism about human nature in the midst of People Behaving Badly. Still, if you don't take the theological implications seriously (while guarding against the humanistic worldview involved), there are some good messages here, especially where romantic relationships are concerned. Though this is ideologically motivated, the ideology doesn't really drive the story.

The characters are the primary elements here, and in their case, there is no ambiguity. They're the sort you want to follow around and watch, which is the joy of the story.

As the story opens, Willie has just had an idee for keeping propellers from getting caught in the eel grass when Celestina's nephew Robert Morton, who happens to have a naval engineering background, shows up for a visit. He takes an interest in the project and in a local girl, when some rich friends turn up and complicate matters.

An auspicious opening! Let's check the vital components list:

Obnoxious, shallow rich girl? Check!
Wise (grand)motherly mentor figure? Check!
Dark family secret revealed to flabbergastification of all and sundry? Check!
Quirky will and (in)convenient demise? Check!
Strange goin's-on, conspiracy-wise? Check!

Looks like we're good to go!

For all its twists, Flood Tide is a fairly laid-back story: no nightmare potential, no real real chance of elevating your blood pressure, just an entertaining and sometimes inspiring read.

Flood Tide:

E-book
Audiobook

Blindfolded: a Free Book review

I did not think I'd like Earle Ashley Walcott's Blindfolded when it showed up on LibriVox. The description sounds a bit like an early version of Little Miss Marker. But it was one of Roger Melin's contributions, so I tried it anyway.

To begin with, I'll add to Melin's description. The kid doesn't tag along in typical adorable waif style. That's a relief, anyway. And our hero, Giles Dudley, is soon treated to a box seat at a murder. As a special added extra, he gets a good look at the murderer's face. He turns to the police and gets nowhere: they aren't about to go after the guy he saw.

So he vows vengeance, only to find himself swept up in someone else's scheme under another identity--one he can neither maintain perfectly nor dispose of without danger. Who is behind the scheme? What is it about? Why does the owner of the face he saw at the murder apparently want him to act as his confidential agent in stock manipulations? Who can he trust? We're all in the dark with him.

The plot twists sound as though they should be frustrating, especially when he picks up a romantic interest he cannot pursue and various people realize he isn't who he's supposed to be. But this is a well-plotted and paced story, and the maze does eventually resolve.

I like the story. It's not specifically Christian, though it is generally moral and ethical (moreso than some modern Christian fiction). There's an unexpected scene near the end that is very effective and scary--a kind of reverse deathbed conversion--that points in a Christian direction. And against the prejudices of its day, there's a pointed exposition of the fact that Asians do not all look alike--it's part of an overarching theme very important to the story, but that point aside, it's quite well done and a good counterpoint to a prejudice that still lingers to this day in some quarters.

I should mention that there is a fair amount of violence. It isn't particularly graphic or gory, but it is plentiful. There's a lot of action in general and suspense, too.

The scenes of stock market operations in the late 1800s are informative--you can trace the development of modern practices without much trouble. Also, the depiction of China Town in that era, though brief, is fairly well done.

All in all, it's worth a look, and Melin's audio version makes the text proper even more accessible for busy people.

Glengarry School Days: a free book review

Glengarry School Days was written by Ralph Connor in 1902. It's available both as an e-book and an audiobook.

The story is difficult to explain. There is no one main character, though there are only a few major characters, and the baton passes from one to another a few times. Yet I never felt lost in the story.

Simply put, however, it's about some kids at a rural school in Ontario in the mid-nineteenth century and how they interact and mature. The schoolmasters also figure prominently for good or ill.

It is a Christian story in the best possible sense: unlike much modern Christian fiction I've encountered, it is neither preachy nor worldly. It will inspire you to be better, to follow God more closely. It models the change that a few truly righteous people can make. We need more books like this, and I doubt we have the guts or skill to write them.

I will also recommend the audiobook in particular. I usually recommend a text, and I may find the reader(s) of the audio version tolerable. But Bruce Pirie is the perfect reader for this classic text, and the even better news is that he is now preparing another Ralph Conner story, The Man from Glengarry.

Even if this isn't your preferred genre--it surely isn't mine--this is worth reading, or better yet listening to.

Glengarry School Days:
E-book
Audiobook

The House of Arden: A Free Book Review

The House of Arden (free audiobook here) by Edith Nesbit is about a brother and sister who try to find an ancestral treasure so they can restore the ancestral home. All this naturally involves a magical white mole and a lot of time travel.

The setup is simple enough: Edred and Elfrida Arden live with their Aunt Edith (wink-wink, nudge-nudge), who seldom ridicules them for their names. Their dad has gone to South America with Uncle Jim (just Aunt Edith's fiancé thus far) to make a lot of money and be declared dead. Everyone needs a hobby.

Incidentally, Ardens are dropping like flies (everyone still needs a hobby), and Lord Arden's passing sends his title looking for an heir; with Papa Arden out of the way, it lands on Edred with the unerring accuracy of a cartoon piano. This means that Edred has a couple of days to find and utter a spell that will lead to the revelation of the long-lost family treasure. Plucky monkey that he is, he succeeds, but all he gets is a grumpy mole that tells him he needs some old-fashioned character development first. This can only mean a bunch of adventures.

And it's here that the story starts to wobble a bit. For one thing, we've already been told that each generation of Ardens conveniently features a boy and girl named Edred and Elfrida, respectively, whose place our pair manage to take in whatever time they appear. Then we encounter a nice old lady who is called a witch by superstitious rustics when she's really just really, really smart and does time travel and can summon the mole and--wait, she is a witch, though, isn't she? Hmm.

That's never clarified, unfortunately. The line between magic and really weird science is vague at best here, and perhaps what she does can be considered non-magical in terms of the story. But I doubt it--and that means the author has lied about the witch's nature, which is a no-no.

There is some good historical fiction in the adventures, which is a positive. But we also start generating lose ends. People turn up and are apparently important, but the arcs go nowhere. This becomes especially bad near the end, where several situations are set up only to evaporate, and in the end we get a Big Cosmic Lesson that is fine but contrary to the overall direction of the story.

In sum, I got the impression that Nesbit had a major change of personality while writing the story. In fact, there are a few places where the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next simply don't mesh. But the last chapter doesn't mesh with the rest of the book, and that's fatally bad. So while I'm generally a fan of Nesbit's work, I can't recommend this one.

32 Caliber: a Free Book review

32 Caliber (available here as a free audiobook) by Donald McGibney is difficult to describe adequately. I admit I didn't care for the opening, which shows us how low and icky the villains are. However, after the fatal "accident," there are a lot of twists and turns that somehow aren't annoying. (I generally dislike sequences such as "X did it!" "No, Y!" "No, Z!" "I still say it was X!") The solution is rather ingenious; I considered something of the sort but didn't think the author would do such a thing.

Some issues:

1. As noted, the first part, especially the second chapter, ticked me off. Not my kind of material. However, it's fairly brief.

2. The narrator is a successful lawyer, but he's remarkably impulsive and hot-tempered. A successful lawyer keeps his cool while his victim explodes.

3. Technical quibble: the putative murder weapon is variously referred to as a "revolver" and an "automatic." Flip a coin, McGibney! It's eventually described as having an ammo clip, so it's evidently an automatic. Some people use "revolver" when they mean "handgun."

4. There's an ongoing message that at least some women need to be abused a bit as a prelude to romance. No: women generally want a man who can take charge, but that's not at all the same as abuse. Even pretending to despise someone to get their interest is dishonest and manipulative. I would probably write off Mary as a potential love interest. Too obnoxious.

Conclusion. I recommend this regardless. It's milder than most mysteries you'll see today, and it gives you a good feel for an earlier time, when people were just beginning to come to grips with a major new technology.

The Sheridan Road Mystery: a Free Book review

The Sheridan Road Mystery (free audiobook here) by Paul and Mabel Thorne is a fairly brief mystery novel that moves in several unexpected directions. There were points I found predictable--I correctly figured out where the criminal mastermind got off to, for example--but it's fast-paced and enjoyable with quite a few surprises.

A patrolman is walking his beat in the wee hours when he hears a shot. He heads for it as best he can--it's hard to locate a single gunshot by sound alone--and encounters a helpful citizen who guides him to the proper building and room. But the room is locked, and when the cops get in, they at first find no evidence of a crime. Then the aforementioned citizen a little too helpfully locates some evidence for them. They are not amused. Who is this guy anyway?

This isn't exactly a cozy mystery: not counting the initial crime, there are assorted boppings, bashings, and thrashings. The heroine is bonked once and drugged twice, which puts her in the lead for receiving abuse, but it's all off camera, so to speak. The bad guys get pounded even more thoroughly. Still, the level of violence is fairly mild. The grossest moment is when they finally find the body, and even that is not particularly intense. The story will keep your interest without giving you nightmares. The profanity level is also tepid by modern standards, though stronger than I would personally write.

Actually, if I were going to complain, it would be about something else: the story twice shifts apparent heroes. We start with Policeman Murphy--a likable chap. Don't get attached to him, though: he will nearly disappear after a chapter or so. Then we get Detective Sergeant Dave Morgan, an even more obvious hero figure.

Guess what...

Morgan doesn't outright disappear from the story, but after a few chapters it becomes clear that he isn't the hero of the story either. I wouldn't pull such a trick as a writer, but it doesn't cause any problems for the reader.

In sum, a good read and probably better than a lot of modern stories you'd actually pay for.

The Dueling Machine: a Free Book review

The Dueling Machine (free audiobook here), written by Ben Bova with Myron R. Lewis, is a classic, early virtual-reality mystery/adventure.

I encountered Bova's sci-fi in the mid seventies; as usual, the later work isn't as good—I have a general rule not to trust written sci-fi after 1960 or certainly 1970—but his was reasonably good anyway. And the dust jackets always alluded to The Dueling Machine as if it was some kind of classic.

It is. It showed up on Gutenberg recently, and the audio version arrived soon after, so I finally got a look at the story. (I'm sure the actual book differs a bit from the Analog novella, but probably not much.)

As our story opens, mankind's interest in exploration and colonization has been overcome by the expense of colonizing and the realization that it's a whole lot more comfy on the couch at home, even if the rising population results in the government's micromanaging your life. This leads to general grumpiness.

It doesn't help when Dr. Albert Robertus Leoh invents a 3D communication system that somehow reaches across hundreds of light years instantaneously, severely irking the likes of Albert Einstein. So he invents the dueling machine: a virtual reality system that lets you and a mutual enemy kill each other thoroughly without actual harm to anyone.

Except that suddenly the hatchet man for an imperialistic dictator starts challenging people to duels they don't survive, with results that destabilize several worlds. Dr. Leoh is brought in to investigate, along with a Star Watchman, math geek, and klutz named Hector. Can they solve the mystery and thwart the bad guys before getting killed? (Because posthumous revenge isn't nearly as much fun as it sounds.)

I admit that I wondered at the lack of a panic button for duelists than would bail them out before they needed a change of clothes. That would have solved the whole thing. But that point aside, this is a good story. I should also mention that one of the deaths is recorded in considerable detail, which could be a bit intense for some readers.

The Dueling Machine:
Gutenberg e-text

LibriVox audiobook),

Talents, Incorporated: A Free Book review

Talents, Incorporated (available here as a free audiobook) by Murray Leinster opens with a planet, Kandar, preparing to be conquered: burning sensitive documents, trying to get people out of the area who would be tortured to death by the conquerors, that sort of thing. The Kandarian fleet is going to meet the incoming Mekinese armada and be destroyed.

Then a space yacht pops in, run by a stout gentleman named Morgan and his daughter Gwenlyn, who own Talents, Incorporated--a company that specializes in providing information and services that anyone else would consider impossible. They are there to enable Kandar to defeat the Mekinese Empire. They'll do so largely by providing advance information and the basis for technological advances, almost always accompanied by the phrase, "That's Talents, Incorporated information. You can depend on it!"

The Talents of Talents, Incorporated are normal people with some peculiarity--lightning calculation, lie detection, and so forth. Some are psionic or divinatory, which I admit I don't care for: there is a dowser, for example. However, the story focuses more on Captain Bors, Morgan, and Gwenlyn, and the annoying bits are largely forgetable.

What does Morgan want? Not money, evidently, and while he does collect medals, that seems too small a motive for overthrowing a stellar empire. You eventually find out what his angle is, but not before Captain Bors of the Kandarian Navy discovers how bothersome it is to destroy an armada that was supposed to destroy you. Sometimes the only solution, as Bron Hoddan discovered in The Pirates of Ersatz, is piracy.

While I didn't care for this quite as much as for The Pirates of Ersatz, it has a quirky charm of its own that I found irresistible. You'll enjoy it, too.

That's Talents, Incorporated information. You can depend on it!

Talents, Incorporated:

Free Gutenberg e-text

Free audiobook

Pirates of Ersatz: a Free Book review

The Pirates of Ersatz (available here as a free audiobook) by Murray Leinster, is the story of Bron Hoddan, who intends "in order (a) to achieve splendid things as an electronic engineer, (b) to grow satisfactorily rich, (c) to marry a delightful girl, and (d) end his life a great man."

It doesn't help that his family is a bunch of space pirates. It also doesn't help that Walden, the most civilized planet in the galaxy, doesn't really want an electrical engineer with new ideas, no matter how useful. So he soon finds himself locked away for improving some local equipment (or creating a death ray, depending on who you believe). Perhaps he should try the other end of the scale--a planet like Darth, run by rival warlords with relatively primitive technology. Warlords like Don Loris ("who was prince of this and baron of that and so on"), who has a scheme to take over the planet. He also has a beautiful, willful, and...well, maybe occasionally homicidal daughter named Fani.

As Bron goes from pickle to bigger pickle to Death Dill, he begins to respect the advice and wisdom of his grandfather, and he also keeps finding that people's preconceptions lock them into failure. Will he somehow overcome his own and avoid the same fate?

This story has a number of great quotes:

"It's no use!" it was the custom of his grandfather to say. "There's not a bit o' use in having brains! All they do is get you into trouble! A lucky idiot's ten times better off than a brainy man with a jinx on him! A smart man starts thinkin', and he thinks himself into a jail cell if his luck is bad, and good luck's wasted on him because it ain't reasonable and he don't believe in it when it happens! It's taken me a lifetime to keep my brains from ruinin' me! No, sir! I hope none o' my descendants inherit my brains! I pity 'em if they do!"

"Government, in the local or planetary sense of the word, is an organization for the suppression of adventure. Taxes are, in part, the insurance premiums one pays for protection against the unpredictable." (That kind of reasoning should sound familiar these days!)

The economics presented here is nonsense--so's a lot of the story, really--but it's a good yarn and extremely fun. I'll definitely come back to it later--probably several times.

Once again, that's The Pirates of Ersatz:

Free Gutenberg e-text

Free audiobook

The Uttermost Farthing: a Free Book review

The Uttermost Farthing (free audiobook here) by R. Austin Freeman is not a Dr. Thorndyke novel; quite the opposite. It's more nearly what you might get if Thorndyke turned vigilante.

A word of warning: this story is somewhat ghoulish. It isn't particularly graphic, but the concept is rather gross. I won't explain it: just read the first chapter, and you'll know basically what's going on. If it grosses you out, drop the whole idea.

You may ask why I stuck it out. Well, there is a certain grim fascination to the idea, in part because Humphrey Challoner is so different from Thorndyke in some ways.

In any case, this is the setup:

Years before the story opens, Challoner is a happily married man. He's also an anatomist with a small private museum specializing in skeletal remains, especially of animals with deformities. His hobby turns out to have more staying power than his marriage, however, when a burglar decides to arrest Mrs. Challoner's vital functions with a bullet.

As they say in the action-hero genre, Big Mistake.

Even stunned by his sudden change of marital status, Challoner is a lot smarter than the cops. He notices that the murderer left behind finger prints (this was the late 1800s, before the cops were as fixated with latent prints as they were in The Red Thumb Mark). There's also a bit of hair--and not ordinary hair; it's ringed hair, unusual enough to help identify the culprit even without the finger prints. Armed with this evidence, the best physique and training money can buy, and a heapin' helpin' of vigilante spirit, Challoner's going to remove some bad guys from the gene pool.

Did I mention that this is before the story opens? Well, let's open the story, already.

As the story begins, Humphrey Challoner is an old man on the way out. He likes his doctor, a guy named Wharton, who is more like Jervis than Thorndyke. Challoner has shown Dr. Wharton around the private museum at times. He tells the doctor about his personal tragedy and bequeaths the place--especially the museum--to the doctor, including a unique collection no one else even knows exists. Dr. Wharton also gets a secret stash of notes detailing the provenance of all the more interesting specimens. The bulk of the story is Wharton's edited version of those notes.

It should be clear that Challoner's new hobby doesn't bear imitating, though he does set things up (generally) so that he's acting in self defense. Still, the story has points of interest as Dr. Wharton mulls over the moral and philosophical issues. The main mystery here, however, is why no one has made a major movie out of this so far.

The Eye of Osiris: a Free Book review

The Eye of Osiris (free audiobook here) by R. Austin Freeman is the second Dr. Thorndyke novel. In some respects, it's the better story--it's certainly the better mystery, because the solution won't be as obvious to a modern reader. However, it's also more ideologically motivated than The Red Thumb Mark: Freeman was not a Christian--he considered Christianity an outmoded relic--and there's a strong element of paganism in this story that wasn't nearly as noticeable in the first one.

Anyway--as the story opens, Dr. John Thorndyke is lecturing on the legal and medical problems of determining when (or if) someone has died. (This can affect inheritance if the order of two deaths is unknown.) He mentions a recent incident in which a man, John Bellingham, disappeared mysteriously, noting that it's likely to become a legal muddle. Then we flash forward a few years, and he was right.

One of the medical students at the lecture was Paul Berkeley, our narrator. He's substituting for another doctor when he encounters John Bellingham's brother, Godfrey, and niece, Ruth, both reduced to penury, which didn't pay well back then. And it's all because of perhaps the stupidest will in history.

Why stupid? The man who disappeared bequeathed £5,000 to his cousin and the rest of the estate to his brother. However, he stipulated that his remains be deposited in a proper spot in one of a few specific parishes. Since he has disappeared, it could be difficult to carry this out: they neither know where his body is nor whether he's done using it. But if the body is not so disposed of, the cousin gets the whole estate.

The cousin is trying to have the idiot testator declared dead, which would pretty much give him the estate. And suddenly bits of skeleton start showing up in places on or near the missing man's property...

The story is also rather droll in places. For example, at the hearing to determine whether to declare the missing man dead, a lawyer mentions the disappearance, "the most remarkable feature of that disappearance being, perhaps, its suddenness and completeness." The judge retorts, "It would, perhaps, have been even more remarkable if the testator had disappeared gradually and incompletely."

To conclude: the theological aspects are annoying, but otherwise this is a very entertaining and (dare I say it?) educational mystery. Recommended with some reservations.