Review: Strangely Entertaining!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 01 29, 2014
I got a real kick out of these stories, even though I could objectively see that they weren't that great to start with, and the quality deteriorated steadily as the book went on. But while I was reading it, I couldn't bring myself to do much else, and there were plenty of other things I needed to be doing! So I'm going to get really, really subjective and give this book 5 stars because, in the main, it was just plain fun.The adventures start when Chemistry Professor Craig Kennedy forms a criminology department at the university where he teaches. He basically drags his best friend and roommate, reporter Walter Jameson, along with him when he also sets up a private detective service out of their flat. It's interesting to watch Kennedy turn from a normal person into Sherlock Holmes within the first 3 novels or so. He develops the ability to go without sleep or food for days while he solves a crime, and becomes extremely secretive until it's time to reveal the solution. Oh yes, he also suddenly turns into a quick-change artist, able to disguise himself so well that Jameson can't recognize him. Gradually he even starts treating Jameson rather poorly, especially considering that he practically begged Jameson to join him right from the start.These stories, written back around World War I, introduce all kinds of technologies that I never would have believed they had back then: early fax machines, early dialysis, early fibrillators, early "wi-fi" and on and on. (There's so much more, you have to read it to believe it.) Apparently at the time the stories were written, Kennedy was being bandied about as The American Sherlock Holmes, which seems ludicrous now, but the books are definitely worth a read for the novelty of it. The place the series fell down (besides the deteriorating writing) is that eventually the scientific devices started repeating themselves. After the third or fourth time Kennedy introduced Jameson to a new-fangled technology as if the detective had never used it before, I started wondering if the author had a problem with his memory. And, at the point where the author got tired of Kennedy not being interested in women a la Holmes, he gave Kennedy a girlfriend, and then the stories turned into The Perils of Pauline. I mean, the girl was kidnapped (several times), poisoned, gassed, nearly drained of blood for an impromptu blood transfusion with an evildoer and so on. These stories read like a bad Saturday serial movie, for those readers old enough to remember such things. Unfortunately, there are two novels about the trials and tribulations of Kennedy's girlfriend. There are also two detective novels in the collection that aren't about Kennedy at all, but basically have the exact same kinds of plots as the Kennedy 'pre-girlfriend' stories.Thirteen novels for under two dollars, how much better can that get? Maybe you'll be like me, trying the book because the price was so reasonable and ending up almost unable to put the book down!