Claremont Tales II

Veteran Science Fiction and Mystery writer Richard A. Lupoff is back with a second retrospective collection of his best short fiction. Last year, Golden Gryphon published Claremont Tales, and now we see Claremont Tales II. This collects several fairly early stories (1969 through 1978), and some recent stories (including a brand new story for this book). Immediately noticeable is Lupoff's versatility. Included are some straight SF, some supernatural horror, and some straight mystery stories, as well as some amalgams of all of the above. Always noticeable, too, is Lupoff's assured storyteller's touch, his engaging voice, and his ability to alter that voice in service of his aims, most notably here in "The Adventure of the Boulevard Assassin", a Sherlock Holmes story written in the style of Jack Kerouac.The above-mentioned Holmes piece, a very sly divertissement, is one of the more impressive entries here. I also quite liked "Jubilee", an Alternate History of a Roman Empire where Julius Caesar survived his assassination attempt. And despite my general lack of sympathy for Lovecraft, I was rather taken with the two Lovecraftian pieces in Claremont Tales II, "The Devil's Hop Yard" and "The Turret". The new story in this book is "Green Ice", a sequel to an earlier story called "Black Mist". This is an SF mystery, in which Japanese-Martian detective Ino Hajime is called in to investigate the activities of a descendant cult to Aum Shinrikyo (the Japanese cult which perpetrated a poison gas attack on a subway a few years past) on the Jovian moon Europa. It's an intriguing, rather mystical, story, which perhaps leaps a bit too quickly to its conclusion, but which is a good read nonetheless. "31.12.99" is an evocative and moving story of the new millennium. "News from New Providence" is a somewhat mordant account of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor investigating a murder in the Bahamas. "Whatever Happened to Nick Neptune?" is a very enjoyable story of a very special pulp magazine. And so on -- top to bottom this is an extremely enjoyable collection.