Roger Zelazny fans — of which there are many — may rejoice in the publication of a lost novel, THE DEAD MAN’S BROTHER, nearly 14 years after his death. But don’t expect another entry in THE CHRONICLES OF AMBER; after all, Hard Case Crime doesn’t publish science fiction.
Reformed art smuggler Ovid Wiley now deals in art legally in a New York City gallery. On page one, he awakes to find his former partner — from his illegal days — stabbed to death on the floor of the place. Wiley has no idea why, so he decides to lie to the cops about him knowing the corpse at all. But because he has no way to prove he didn’t do it, Wiley is thrown in the clinker.
Three days later, the CIA fishes him out, having fingered him via a research study as someone whose services from which the organization can benefit. They have a mission for him: Go to the Vatican and see what he can find out about Father Bretagne, who’s absconded with $3 million of the church’s money. Upon arrival in Rome, the Monsignor provides Wiley with list of five people he should contact as to Bretagne’s whereabouts.
On the list are a café owner, two priests and two women — one of whom used to the girlfriend of Wiley’s now-dead former partner. She informs him that Bretagne spoke of fleeing to his brother’s place in South America, but got shot in the head before that could happen. And with that, of course, is where the two crimes show themselves to be not unrelated. Exactly how requires a trip to yet another continent to discover.
Had I not been told beforehand, I wouldn’t have thought BROTHER to be the work of a sci-fi practitioner. It has enough shadowy intrigue and nefarious characters to suggest someone ensconced in the genre full-time, rather than a dabbler seeing what would happen if he played around in such a world. Although I more enjoyed the first half than the second, Zelazny operates as well as stringing together a mystery and stirring up adventure as he does with general structure and pacing.
Thought to be written somewhere around 1970 and 1971, BROTHER deals in the same globetrotting goodness as Hard Case’s pair of David Dodge efforts. In the Hard Case tradition of solid, well-paced works of crime fiction, it won’t surprise. But if all you know of Zelazny is his sci-fi, it just might. —Rod Lott
Related posts:
- O, BROTHER, where ODD thou?, asks Koontz
- Brother Odd
- Dead Street
- Little Brother
- Echoes from the Dead
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I discovered Zelazny as a young teen and his Amber series might have been the first anti-hero story I had read. After reading Tolkien and so many of his clones, Zelzany was such a refreshing change. I can’t wait to read something new-to-me from him.
This was fairly good. Sometimes I think Zelazney tried to hard to write hard boiled prose, and came off a little fake.