Retief: Diplomat At Arms

 

By Keith Laumer

A collection of Retief stories, dating from 1961 to about 1966.

• Ultimatum aka Mightiest Quorn (1963) Settlers on a planet are suddenly and unexpectedly invaded by an alien race, the Quorn.
• Native Intelligence aka The Governor of Glave (1963) Malcontents on a wintery planet take over the government only to find out governing a planet is a lot more complicated than they imagined.
• The Prince and the Pirate (1964) A palace coup is attempting to oust the rightful ruler of Elora. The rebels have formed an alliance with the Terran ambassador but Retief is siding with the royals.
• Courier aka The Frozen Planet (1961) A criminal organization has brutal plans for a planet of farmers and ranchers. 
• Protest Note aka The Desert and the Stars (1962) The settlers of Flamme have worked hard to make their planet liveable. But now squatters have shown up and are ruining everything. 
• Truce or Consequences (1966) The inhabitants of twin planets are at war, declaring each other intruders on their home worlds. 
• The Secret While visiting with the Terran ambassador, D'ong, the Grotesque Minister of Foreign Affairs for Grote reveals he has a tea bag which can produce endless amounts of tea. The ambassador declares he must know the secret of D'ong's tea bag. But before inquires can be made, D'ong is kidnapped by the Groaci.

I first started reading Retief stories because they were silly and funny. Of this collection, only two of the stories are silly and funny, Truce or  Consequences and The Secret. The rest of the stories in this collection, Laumer's earlier Retief stories, are not funny.  If they had been the first Retief stories I had encountered, I wouldn't have read any more Retief stories. In the earlier stories, Retief is a kind of superman and Malcolm is just a corrupt diplomat. In the funny stories, Retief is still a kind of superman, but a lot faster with a quip. And Malcolm is just a gullible fool who never seems to understand what is really going on. I, for one, am glad Laumer went from writing serious Retief stories to goofy Retief stories with stories featuring giant squirrels, aliens that look like a pile of spaghetti to an alien that is a big as a hill and who entertains his visitors in his innards.

Spring Fever

 

By P.G. Wodehouse

Young lovers of the late 1940s, thwarted in love. First is Stanwood Cobbold, a strong young fellow but none too sharp, Stan has a very rich father who does not approve of Stan's love interest, Eileen Stoker. She is a Hollywood actress and she is off to London and has told Stan she will not marry him because he is dependent on his father for money. 

Next is Lord Shortlands, aka Shorty. He is in love with his cook, Alice Punter. But he shares his home, Beevor Castle, with his rival, the butler, Mervyn Spink. Spink also desires to wed Mrs. Punter, but neither man measures up to her demands: she wants to own a pub and be her own boss. The man she marries must be able to provide her with said pub. Neither Shorty nor Spink can do so. Shorty's income is nil after taxes and he depends upon his eldest daughter for spending money. And Spink is a gambler but not a very lucky gambler.

And then there is Lady Teresa, also one of Shorty's daughters (there's three of them). She would like to fall in love with Mike Cardinal, a Hollywood agent who is also in London trying to get Eileen to sign with his agency. Mike is leading-man-handsome and Terry had a bad experience with a handsome young actor who cheated on her. She fears that Mike is also what she calls a flibbertigibbet, according to her a man who chases after other women while wooing one woman. 

They all end up at Beevor Castle, with Mike posing as Stan, and Stan posing as a Mr. Rossiter, with Shorty and Spink hatching various plans to get their hands on the funds needed to woo Mrs. Punter and with Terry becoming engaged three different times to Stan and Mike. And I can't leave out Augustus Robb, a former burglar and booze-hound who has reformed and is now an ardent Christian and employed as Stan's valet and who turns out to be a dark horse.

To quote the Scottish poet, Robert Burns, "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft a-gley / An' lae'e us nought but grief an' pain, / For promised joy." So it is with the schemes of the plotters in Beevor Castle. But unlike Burns' little mouse, all comes out beautifully in the end. A fun and lighthearted story, typical Wodehouse, I really enjoyed reading it again. 

Crock : You'll Pay For This . . . All Of You!

 

By Parker, Rechin and Wilder

Daily strips from the comic strip Crock. Copyrights from the late 1970s. Authors only listed by their last names but Parker is Brant Parker, Rechin is Bill Rechin and Wilder is Don Wilder. Parker worked on the strip from 1975 to 1976. Bill Rechin from 1975 to 2011. And Don Wilder from 1976 to 2011. The strip ended in 2012 but still appears in reruns. Source: Wikipedia. 

A mildly funny comic strip, it tells about the lives of the men of a Foreign Legion post in some nameless desert country and their encounters with the locals, including bandits and rebels and lovely maidens (some the maidens are not so lovely and some are probably not so maiden). The Commandant is the vicious Vermin Crock, who delights in the suffering of his men and whose cruelty is one of the main features of the strip.

A slice of daily life for the men of Crock's command:

Dog On It

 

By Spencer Quinn

The first book in the Chet and Bernie mystery series.

Chet is Bernie's dog. Chet was in training to become a police dog but failed his final exam. Bernie used to be a police officer but now he is a private detective whose personal life is a mess. He smokes, he sometimes drinks too much, he is divorced, he doesn't get to see his young son enough, his car is about thirty years old and he is chronically short of cash. But at least he has Chet, the police dog drop-out. And Chet is a loyal companion and enthusiastic doggy detective alongside Bernie.

Bernie's latest case is that of a missing teen girl. Madison is only fifteen and she goes missing twice. The first time she shows up the next day. But the second time she doesn't show up. So her mom hires Bernie to find her daughter. Unfortunately Madison's dad tries to throw a monkey wrench in the search, claiming that she will come back on her own in due time. But that isn't enough to keep Bernie from investigating. Then Chet disappears and doesn't come home for days. Chet gets back home and then Bernie disappears and only Chet has a clue as to where Bernie is. But Chet is only a dog and can't ask anyone for help!

This was a pretty good read. Chet is the narrator of the story and even though Chet's thoughts are probably a lot more complex than a dog's probably are, it was still fun to read a story told by a dog. Chet is a good boy and he loves Bernie and is completely loyal to him. Chet does get into some serious danger and is injured which I didn't care for. Over all though, other than the principle voice of the story being that of the dog, this is a typical and fairly mild mystery story without much gore and with no murders. 

Review by Kirkus Reviews.

The Orphan Witch

 

By Paige Crutcher

Persephone was abandoned when she was just a baby. She grew up in the foster care system and never found a forever home. She was a child around whom strange things happened, strange things for which she seemed to be the catalyst. 

Now a grown woman in her thirties, Persephone is still plagued by strange occurrences and  lives her life on the run, ready to bolt at a moment's notice. 

Unknown to Persephone, someone has been looking for her. That person is Hyacinth Evers and when she finds Persephone, she invites her to come stay at her family home on Wile Island. She believes Persephone is her long lost cousin whose mother and grandmother were forced to leave their home on Wile Island and live in exile. Hyacinth also believes that Persephone is an untrained witch and that together with herself and her sister Moira, who are trained witches, they can lift a curse that was placed on the island a hundred years ago. 

But  Hyacinth and Moira are not the only witches on Wile Island. Two other sister witches live on the island. Ellison and Ariel Way are certain that the Evers sister's attempts to lift the curse will actually destroy the island. That combined with bad blood that dates back to their shared childhood has turned the Way sisters against their Evers cousins. And against Persephone as the unwitting, untrained tool of the Evers witches.

This was an OK read. The first part is pretty intriguing as Persephone accidentally causes several men to attempt to kill themselves simply because she looked them straight in the eyes. But once she arrived on Wile Island, it got a bit boring, living the rural witchy life with the two sisters. But just in time, Persephone meets a man of mystery who sets her toes to tingling. That certainly made the story a bit more engaging. But overall the story never really grabbed me. 

Review by Publishers Weekly.