#Charmas baylock psp

You’ll feel as if you could map its charming streets and places when the book ends.

Likewise, Phibbs is portrayed not as pure Cruella de Vil, but as a woman with some honest, even pitiful passions and affections-her partner in crime, the repugnant Carmody, holds a place in her heart, until he betrays her-whose undoing is sheer greed and self-centeredness.īlaylock devotes equal attention to Old Orange itself. This insightful marital glitch-Jerry is just used to handling stuff on his own, plans eventually to reveal it, doesn’t want to bother his wife, etc-lends verisimilitude to the relationship. The biggest bad choice made is for Jerry to keep the finding of the ghost and treasure a secret from Jane. As the ghost bequeaths disturbing visions (can Jane’s book club members help exorcise him?) and Phibbs grows more and more desperate, fortunes and lives hang in the balance.īlaylock doesn’t indulge in slapstick here, but rather a lowkey comedy enacted by not-wildly-unaverage people pushed by circumstances into bad choices, some of which are silly, some of which are menacing. Soon, Phibb’s machinations-some ludicrous, some wicked-set off a cascade of actions: breaking and entering, theft, stalking, impersonations, visits to a numismatist under a false identity, the donning of bad wigs and the employment of pistols. His display of a couple of rare coins is enough to launch Phibbs onto his back like a vulture.īut none of the parties initially take into account the most important factor: the treasure is guarded by a malign ghost. When a small earthquake sends Jerry into the crawlspace below the house and he discovers the treasure, the game is afoot. So she reaches out to Lettie Phibbs, the slightly dotty owner/manager of the Antiquity Center, a regional library and historical museum, for help and support.īut what the Larkins do not at first realize is that Phibbs is an egomaniacal sociopath, a former murderess with a new identity, who quickly comes to believe that the Larkin home is literally sitting atop a buried treasure that Phibbs knows of and covets. The Larkins also newly inhabit a beautiful historical house.Īs a newcomer to the place, Jane wants to make good contacts. (Of course, as in every good screwball comedy, they possess a lovable, eccentric dog, in this case named Peewee.). Jane-more sober, competent, self-actuated and outward looking- is intent on promoting and expanding the Old Orange Co-Op, a kind of neighborhood organization that will foster community-building activities-victory gardens, festivals, and the like. And not a little wrapped up in following his own oddball bliss. He’s smart but kind of a daydreamer, handy but a little bit of a doofus. Jerry has sufficient funds that he can follow his whims without holding down a job. Jane and Jerry Larkin are a happily married young couple. Blaylock jumps his narrative from one POV to another, to excellent effect, especially in the climactic scenes, where each jump leaves each character in a cliffhanger situation. In the California venue called Old Orange-”the downtown historical district of the City of Orange”-live our three protagonists (and a host of other vivid folks). I want to call it a “screwball caper,” a blend of screwball comedy and caper film, and I see thru Google that this term has some little usage already, so let’s go with it!

And this book features more authentic pathos, romance, and comedy than the grand guignol Society. With Pennies, Blaylock is back in contemporary times, in the setting he loves so deeply and limns so well, small-town California. His previous one, The Gobblin’ Society, I covered in the pages of Asimov’s in 2020, finding it a fun, quasi-steampunk horror excursion. A new novel from Blaylock is a major occasion. Missing its arrival, I was never not going to review it, once I caught up to it.

#Charmas baylock psp

One of the firm’s most recent offerings, showcasing the standard high quality of all PSP books, is James Blaylock’s Pennies from Heaven, which saw the light of day in December of 2022. Their hard work has immeasurably brightened and uplifted fantastika in the twenty-first century. Our field should be heaping laurels upon the heads of Pete and Nicky Crowther and their crew. The Internet Science Fiction Database informs me that PS Publishing issued its first title in 1999-and since then has produced nearly one thousand more! That is some kind of dramatic major milestone for any small press, as they approach their twenty-fifth anniversary. I find it incredibly hard to believe that so many years have passed.