Friday's (or actually Saturday's) Forgotten Book: Victor Gischler: Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse

Back in the days when I was planning and editing the short-lived paperback series of the Arktinen Banaani publishers one of the manuscripts I was sent was Victor Gischler's Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse. I didn't read it at the time, because it seemed obvious from the start that the series wouldn't continue for long. I'd read Gischler's Vampire A-Go-Go and enjoyed it, but thought it wouldn't fit the paperback line easily; here's my blog post on the book. The manuscript of Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse I'd printed out came up when I was cleaning my desk before the holidays and I decided I'd finally read it, but instead of reading the book from the printed sheets, I ordered a copy from a web store.

I'm glad to tell you that Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse (GGGOTA) is a very good book. It's funny, exciting and violent, but there's also some warm humanity in the depiction of the protagonists. The set-up is good: one man has lived in a cage for nine years after the apocalypse (which is explained away in a short sentence, which is a good thing) kills three mysterious men he encounters in the woods and starts to think he should try to find out what's happened to the mankind. He also misses his wife he hasn't seen in nine years. Not all about their marriage is explained in the beginning and Gischler keeps important things away from sight till the second half of the book. The collapsed society of the near future is plausibly done, even though it's a mix-up of westerns and Mad Max. Gischler takes things over the top, but does that very well. GGGOTA is a grand adventure in the style of Huckleberry Finn. I would've gladly taken the book in with the Finnish paperback series, but alas the series didn't see the light of day after five books (and four that came out in hardcover - the format change didn't change a thing, even though we added two Finnish books in the bunch).


GGGOTA may not be to everyone's taste, but I liked the heck out of it. One point, though: I didn't like the scene with the crazy man-hating transsexual.

It seems Gischler managed to fund writing the sequel, but the book doesn't seem to be out as yet.

Didn't mean to do this as a part of the Forgotten Books meme, but here's a link to Todd's blog with the other links.

Some books I've read recently: Bruen, Gischler, Marc Behm, Finnish sleaze

The Annual Summer Reading Report!

I usually try to read something non-work related during the Summer holidays, but with me and my precedence for crime fiction, it's pretty hard to say if it's work or not to read Ken Bruen or Victor Gischler. Bruen's London Boulevard I picked up to be translated in Finnish quite recently and Gischler has been on my possible-to-be-translated list for some time now.

The Pistol Poets was the first of his actual crime books I've read, though. It was actually a bit different than I'd thought it to be - can't really say what I expected, but certainly not a university satire! The Pistol Poets is more than that, since it's also a great crime novel with lots of dark humour and tough violence in it. Gischler spins the multifaceted yarn very well, makes it seem very easy, and many characters are full of life, though not many of them are worthy idols, more like low-life trash! Very heartily recommended, if you're not familiar with his work. (Here's my earlier take on his Vampire A-Go-Go. It was funny as hell, but a bit juvenile at some places.)

Ken Bruen's The Guards was his first Jack Taylor novel for me. I've read earlier London Boulevard, which I liked (with some reservations toward its nature as pastiche), and Rilke on Black, which I thought lacked plot. The same could go for The Guards as well. I'm not sure whether it was just me, but I thought the book should've had more strictly plot-related stuff to it. I couldn't even warm myself up to Bruen's style, though I liked it in London Boulevard. And Bruen's habit of dropping crime authors' and films' names is only a knowing wink that doesn't bring much new to the books themselves.

I'm in the middle of Marc Behm's Eye of the Beholder (1980; in Finnish as Vaanijan silmässä, Book Studio 2002; translated by Mika Tiirinen [the same guy who's done the Finnish Wignalls!]). It's a classic of weird noir, a decidedly non-psychological psychologic crime novel, with a private eye hero, called only Eye, whose existence we soon begin to suspect. Very original, but also, I think, a bit dated. It may be due to the Finnish translation that's not very rich in tone. But then again I think Behm went for monotony. I'd like to hear some comments on this.

I also read a Finnish sleaze paperback from 1979, anonymously published Kova kovaa vasten (The Tough Get Going or something like that). It's a private eye novel, with lots of sex scenes and almost non-existent plot - it's there and it seems to make sense, though one forgets what happened before the last 50-page orgy. Some of the sentences read like it was written by a "real" writer, but I don't know who it is. No one's done any research into these books in Finland, which is a pity.

As usual, I'm sure I'm forgetting something... I haven't read as much as I would've liked to, but there's still Summer left!

Victor Gischler's Vampire A-Go-Go

Victor Gischler's new novel, Vampire A-Go-Go, has been available for some days now. I had a chance to read it just last weekend - even when I was on my sick bed, I enjoyed the heck out of it. With some reservations, but let me get back to them in a sec.

Many of you know by now that Vampire A-Go-Go is genre hybrid, mixing vampires, werewolves, zombies, ancient alchemy, a group of Jesuits guarding ancient secrets with handgranades and shotguns... There's not much missing here - maybe a dinosaur or two, but I can live without. On top of everything the book seems to be a parody of Dan Brown and his ilk, but also an example of how one can assemble a book that has the same elements with the lesser amount of pages. Gischler is indeed an economic storyteller, giving hints of what kind of people his characters are through how they speak and how they act. At times Vampire A-Go-Go reminded me of early Lawrence Block.

So, this is a very fast and enjoyable read, but I had a slight problem reading the book, actually almost all the time. Apart from the violence - which is pretty tough from time to time - I had a feeling that this could be a juvenile or a YA novel. Some of the characters are university students and there's a love angle, which may have attributed to my feeling, but there's also something else. I can't really put my finger on it. I can say that I didn't have that feeling when Gischler was narrating the life story of John Dee's fellow alchemist, Edward Kelley. Even though Gischler's dialogue in these parts is delightfully anachronistic (I really can't picture an early 17th century gentleman saying: "You okay, Dee?"), there's really a feeling of an old, bitter man talking. And during these times I enjoyed Vampire A-Go-Go most.