Customer Reviews

Stalking the Unicorn: A Fable of Tonight: A John Justin Mallory Mystery

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If dark comedy, irony, or fantasy/sci-fi are your bag, it would be well worth it for you to try REALLY hard to find this book, as you will not be disappointed. This book starts off with John Mallory, a down on his luck private investigator, spending New Year's Eve alone in his dreary Manhattan office. His wife has run off with his ex-partner, the mafia has put a price on his head, and just when it seemed things couldn't get any cheerier, a little green elf shows up in his office who, to Mallory's surprise, is not an alcohol-based hallucination. It seems that the elf has a job for Mallory... and by dawn the next day, the two will have journeyed to an alternate world which is identical to, and at the same time nothing like, the Manhattan that Mallory has come to know. Resnick's style is dark and ironic, while still maintaining a deeper level of humor than found in most books of this genre. It may be difficult to find this book now, but if what you just read has enticed you, it'll be well worth it.

This remains the only book I have ever read by Resnick, though I have read a few of his short stories, which have much the same flavor. The hilarity starts in the first chapter and keeps right on going. The hero is transported to a Manhatten terrorized by a demon, because the demon has stolen a unicorn... but I won't give too much away. All I will say is- go out of your way to look for this book. The humor, the completely unexpected ending, and the oddly sympathetic bad guys (once you figure out who the bad guys are) make it hard to pass up.

When I started reviewing books I told myself I wouldn't review those I didn't like. Why? Because 1) I use my real name and 2) I am an author myself and don't think it's good karma or very professional to put down another author's work. Having said this, I'm about to make an exception. Why? Because there are not many reviews for this book and no bad reviews, and buyers should know what they're getting.

Resnick is a great award-winning author. He's been writing forever and has hundreds of books to his name, and anyone starting out reading Stalking the Unicorn can see why. After the first chapter I was excited and anxious for more. But once Resnick took us out of the real world and into his fantasy world, things started to go astray.

I liked some of the humor sprinkled throughout the story, but much of it seemed forced, as if Resnick were trying to be funny instead of being funny. But the bigger problem was his "trying" to create a world that was absurd. His world was absurd, all right, but not in a good way. It felt to me--and to my wife, who quit reading about halfway through--as if Resnick were searching his imagination, looking for the most absurd elements he could find, whether or not they had any point being in the story.

As I said before, Mike Resnick must be a good author. I am guessing he has hundreds of books that are a joy to read. If so, I recommend you try one of those. This cannot possibly be his best work.

Great silly read. Plotwise it is similar to The Maltese Falcon but put in a world that reminds me of the Artemis Fowl books. Fans of Roger Zelazny (and especially of his short story "Unicorn Variations" will enjoy this book.

I'm going to be quite blunt here. This book was cheesy. Of course, it was supposed to be cheesy, at least in parts, as it was a combination fantasy novel and spoof on old Private-Eye novels. I think that it did remarkably well in the spoof factor, but the fantasy factor fell a little short.

As a Private-Eye spoof, it got just about everything right, all the way down to the twist at the end about the crime and who done it. It was so easy to see Mallory walking around in a trench coat and hat like the old Dicks of the 1920s.

As a fantasy novel, it did all right, but I think that at times Resnick was trying too hard. There were a lot of things that were squeezed in for no apparent reason other than to make the world seem more "fantasy-like," but I think that it would have been better had the differences between the two New Yorks been more subtle for the most part. Then the major differences would have been bigger surprises and would have been more effective.

Probably the best part of this book was the characters. I wouldn't say that any of them were spectacularly well-developed, but they were definitely interesting. I liked how Resnick included little quirks for each of them. They were all memorable, even the ones that I knew next to nothing about, which unfortunately were most of them. Really, I didn't even know that much about Mallory by the end of the book.

All in all, I found this book to be enjoyable, but nothing spectacular.

Very similar to Simon R. Green's "Nightside". This quirky adventure is based on funny dialogs rather than on real action or suspense. Thanks to a little green elf who hires him to find a stolen unicorn, PI John Justin Mallory finds himself in an alternate New York where there are yellow elephants instead of taxis, horses talk and stuffed animals don't actually realize they are already dead, where hawkers sell suntan lotion in the middle of a blizzard and there's a Department of a Redundancy Department, among other things. Hilarity ensues, of course.

But what I love most is, that amidst all the crazy stuff, Mallory is still a rather ruthless man, punishing and getting rid of anybody who betrays him or hurts his friends and without remorse too. Thanks to Mallory's personality, the book feels grounded, not just... out there.

Satiric/humorous sci fi or fantasy is hard to do well. Lesser writers often overreach for the jokes, while the really good ones sometimes spend a little too much time congratulating themselves for being clever. I love the Discworld and Thursday Next, but there is a self-congratulatory tone to them that can be off-putting in places.

Resnick succeeds by never drawing attention to what he's doing. He takes for granted the fact that he's created an off-kilter world, which means off-kilter things happen and off-kilter people live there. This approach gives him a deft hand that allows the oddity to simply be without forcing it into the limelight. It's a refreshing take on the sub-genre that left me wanting more.

What do you get when you cross a down-on-his-luck private eye, a randy elf, a femme feline, a miniature horse, and a whole host of other oddball characters? Well, if you answered, "The book this review is about, you dolt," or something to that effect, then congratulations, you are right (and slightly hurtful). You get a gold star.

Stalking the Unicorn instantly had me hooked with the appealing characters, interesting plot, and tongue-in-cheek humor. The story flowed well and at a nice, clipped pace for a good part of the book. Unfortunately, it fizzled out a little bit nearer the end and lost some of my interest. I think too much was revealed too soon and the book probably could have lost around thirty pages. However, the plot picked back up some of its steam at the end, which saved the book from being three stars. Altogether, this is an easy and fun read that's a good starter to a series, and which I look forward to the next installments. If you like absurd humor, zany dialogue, detective work, and an urban fantasy setting all mixed into one big stew, than you'll probably enjoy this book.

Fun fact: Mike Resnick is the father of author Laura Resnick. I picked both of their books up about the same time without realizing it until after I had read her first Esther Diamond book. :)

At first John Justin Mallory thought he was drunk, but Murgensturm the elf was real, and the *other* Manhattan is real too. A hard drinking, hard boiled detective matches wits with a demon, a leprechaun, and a double cross or two. He finds a city much like his home but with society ladies raising miniature chimeras and elephant howdah taxis.

John Justin Mallory figures out who's scamming who and how to come out on top.

What's best with fantasy and old school detective stories in a single cover. A complex skein of motives and opportunities, no hidden clues or characters, and the most entertaining cameos. A chess game played for decades, retired race horses with grudges against humanity, the missing person office at a police station where the proverbial Odd Man Out resides, the genies of the New York Exchange, Felina, and many others work together to make this a rich and entertaining story.

Can't recommend it highly enough.

E.M. Van Court

I've got a weakness for hard boiled detectives in a magic world and this is one of my favorite books of that type.
John Justin Mallory is just plain human without an idea this whole other fairy world exists parallel with ours until he gets hired to track down a unicorn.
There is a big awfully bad guy, and a lot of whimsy and fun with a mystery to be solved.
I read a lot, and so some books I judge by how well I remember them, this one, I read when it first came out, as well as a short story set in the same world in an anthology. I always hoped for sequels and now there are some finally.
If you like Harry Dresden, give Mallory a try. It's a fun, light read.