I’ve been a fan of prolific Simon R. Green’s Science Fiction (Deathstalker series) and Fantasy (Nightside series). Green’s Ishmael Jones series falls somewhere between. Ishmael Jones is an agent for a shadowy entity called The Organization. Jones is invited by his boss, The Colonel, to elegant but isolated Belcourt Manor for Christmas. Jones arrives in the middle of a blizzard which shuts down roads in the area. And, like an Agatha Christie novel, the characters at Belcourt Manor start to be murdered, one by one. Ishmael Jones mentions he operates on the dark side of the road. He certainly proves it in this novel. Solving the mystery is just part of the plot. Stopping the murderer is another. If you’re looking for a suspenseful Christmas mystery with a twisty plot, give The Dark Side of the Street a try. GRADE: B
THE ISHMAEL JONES MYSTERY SERIES:
The Dark Side of the Road (May 2015)
Dead Man Walking (May 2016)
Very Important Corpses: An Ishmael Jones mystery (March 2017)
Death Shall Come (September 2017)
Into the Thinnest of Air (March 2018)
Murder in the Dark (August 2018)
Till Sudden Death Do Us Part (August 2019)
Night Train to Murder (January 2020)
The House on Widows Hill (July 2020)
Buried Memories (October 2021)
Always amazed at how many prolific writers I have not heard of.
Patti, Simon R. Green seems to publish a book every few months! I have a dozen of his books waiting to be read. I would put many of Green’s books in the “literary comfort food” category. Plenty of action and humor. In THE DARK SIDE OF THE ROAD, Green is parodying Agatha Christie.
I’ve read all of the Nightside series (great stuff!) and some of his others (Secret History). Another friend recommended the Ishmael Jones series and I started this once, but had to return it to the library and never got back to it. One of these days I will be in the mood. I also have a number of his others (Hawk & Fisher) on the shelf.
Patti, to be honest, I don’t think he writes your kind of books.
Jeff, I’ve read a lot of Simon R. Green. I’ve read a handful of the Nightside series (I have all the books, I just need time to read them!). I read an omnibus edition of HAWK & FISHER, but Green may have written more about them. Ishmael Jones walks a fine line between James Bond and Doctor Strange.
I’d never heard of Green either, and I think the decline of bookstores has a lot to do with the fact that somebody can write this many books and be completely unknown to me. Years ago I’d have seen his books in Walden’s or B. Dalton. To find something on the internet you have to actively look for it.
Michael, the implosion of book store chains has certainly impacted the way people shop for books and discover authors. Yet, there has actually been something of a resurgence of independent book stores in the past decade and many of them have flourished in the COVID era as a chunk of the population has shifted its leisure time to staying at home and reading. Book stores have realigned their inventories to accommodate this market so you likely won’t find writers like Green, who have more of a male audience, on their shelves. Instead, you’ll find contemporary “serious” fiction and A LOT of YA romance, thrillers with women protagonists, LGBTQ fantasy and pseudo-lit along the lines of “Circe” and “The Song of Achilles.” All of this stemming from the explosion of hyper-ventilating young women influencers on TikTok (under the #BookTok tag). Given the drastic decline of Americans who read even one book a year, particularly among males, the publishing industry is leaning into this new demographic in a huge way.
Byron, once again you have given us an analytical assessment, this time the current publishing industry. We have few bookstores left. A couple of Barnes & Nobles, a handful of independent book stores, and a few used bookstores. The shifts in contemporary publishing are disturbing…to me at least.
Michael, you’re right. I found dozens of great writers and their books just browsing in bookstores. That seems to be a lost art. I love the Internet’s ability to find almost any book I want–and I’m amazed at times how inexpensive some books are online.
Sounds too dark for me, and I’m sure I hear any Science Fiction in your summary of the plot, so really dark fantasy, eh?
Rick, think Agatha Christie meets Doctor Strange.
Meanwhile, John Clute in THE SF ENCYCLOPEDIA:
[After description of mostly fantasy fiction by Green:] Green is of sf interest mainly for two linked Space Opera series: the Mistworld/Deathstalker Prelude sequence, beginning with Mistworld (1992), serves as a prequel to the larger Deathstalker sequence beginning with Deathstalker (1995) and ending with Deathstalker Coda (2005). The prelude sequence is set in the days when a Galactic Empire still ruthlessly dominates known space, giving itself over to various adventures and adventurers, mostly on the planet Mistworld. The larger sequence is dominated until his death by the eponymous historian/warrior/rebel Hero Owen Deathstalker, who gathers increasingly formidable allies around him as the empire topples; after his death a descendant carries on the tradition. The stories are told at a sometimes helter-skelter pace, and in a farcical voice that can amuse. The spoofing (including some Tuckerisms with cannon-fodder characters named for UK sf figures) is, however, occasionally forced. [JC]
Todd, the MISTWORLD and DEATHSTALKER series accentuate action and adventure and dark humor (occasionally forced). I enjoyed the spoofing!
One of the advantages, particularly in pre-WWWeb days, of reading the fiction magazines was to see the book reviews (as well as samples of what some of the writers were doing in short form, or in serialized or excerpted novels), at least in those magazines which ran reviews. I’ve read a short piece or two by Green over the decades…