The Dead Man's Brother (Hard Case Crime Novel)

by Roger Zelazny

There is a corpse under the Chagall. Once an art smuggler, now a respectable art dealer, Ovid Wiley awoke to find his former partner stabbed to death on his gallery floor. That was strange enough - but when a CIA agent showed up to spring him from NYPD custody, things got a lot stranger. Now the CIA is offering to clear up the murder charge, but only in return for a favor: They want Ovid to fly to Vatican City and trace the trail of a renegade priest who has gone missing with millions in church funds. What's the connection? The priest's lover, a woman Ovid knew in his smuggling days...

• ISBN10: 0843961155
• ISBN13: 9780843961157
• Publish Date: 1 February 2009
• Publish Status: Transferred
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Hard Crime Case
• Format: Paperback (US Mass Market)
• Pages: 256
• Language: English

Reviews

[Metaphorosis Reviews]

reviews.metaphorosis.com

1 stars

An undiscovered Zelazny novel! If you're an SF enthusiast, you long ago discovered Roger Zelazny's amazing talent. You've read Lord of Light, the Amber books, everything you could find. (check out The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny) So, when you run across something new, your heart races, your pulse pounds, you immediately click and order. Sure, international crime rings are not exactly the Zelazny you know and love, but the man was a genius - he could write!

Sadly, The Dead Man's Brother is also not the Zelazny you know and love. While it's fun to see Zelazny in a new genre, if this book were by anyone else, you'd give up after 50 pages. It's just a bad book - awkward characters, weak plot, and none of the fluid, near-poetic prose that characterizes his other work.

Unless you're a true Zelazny completist, don't buy this book. It will only tarnish your memory of one of SF's truly phenomenal talents. Instead, re-read Isle of the Dead and go to bed happy.