Pulp fiction for the intelligent
S. E. G. Hopkin
THE METATEMPORAL DETECTIVE by Michael Moorcock Prometheus Books, £17.99, pp. 327, ISBN 9781591025962 The late Alan Coren once called a collection of articles Golfing for Cats, in order, he claimed, to maximise his sales by tapping in to two profitable markets at once. Michael Moorcock has lavishly adopted this stratagem. The cataloguing data for this book defines it as: ‘1. Detective and mystery stories. 2. Fantasy fiction.’ The author himself claims it as a tribute to the Sexton Blake series (for which he wrote his first published novel), but there is hardly a tree in the orchard of pulp fiction from which he has not scrumped: the Western story, the gumshoe, the horror. For each he finds an answerable style, even to the occasional vulgarism and clumsy piece of exposition. The hero is allowed omniscience and his favourite brands of tobacco and alcohol. It would all be irritatingly patronising if the author’s genuine affection for this world were not evident.
The book contains 11 stories written for various publications over a period of 40 years, one of them new. They deal with encounters between the detective Seaton Begg and his cousin and adversary M. Zenith the albino (an original Sexton Blake villain). Seaton Begg, originally a private detective, is later seen to be working for the Home Office Metatemporal Investigative Agency, and cooperating with his French opposite numbers at the neatly named Sûreté du Temps Perdu. Zenith appears at first as a classic pulp aristocrat in impeccable evening dress, but rapidly acquires supernatural characteristics, notably a black sword decorated with ‘writhing’ crimson runes, which drinks souls. The miscellaneous origins of the stories occasion a number of inconsistencies, but this is unimportant, as the whole thing takes place in Moorcock’s multiverse, a series of alternate worlds which differ from our own in many details. Airships and electric broughams abound. This conceit allows Moorcock some jokes, such as the news that Dirk Bogarde is divorcing Fenella Fielding and naming Ian McKellen as corespondent. It also affords him an exciting climax in the final and most recent story, which takes place in the roads between the worlds. Moreover, it enables him to indulge his taste for political satire. This becomes blatant in the rather heavy-handed anti-Bush episode, The Mystery of the Texas Twister, where the Southern states take on some of the characteristics of the Middle East in our world. Elsewhere, Lady Thatcher’s alter ego is briefly murdered, a rather pathetic Hitler appears several times, and two IRA men, in a chilling miniature, receive the rewards of their actions.
The overwhelming impression is of Moorcock rewriting the world as he does his earlier fiction. Both detective and villain become members of the family he created, the Von Beks, and he finds room for guest appearances of some of his rep. company, such as Mrs Una Persson. There are little treats for the observant, such as a reference to Pope Clement the Dane and the information that The Master Mummer (another Blake villain) has been incarcerated. It is all very civilised; a sort of bank holiday outing for the well read.
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