Upstream Reviews - Of All the Gin Joints in the Universe, by Richard Paolinelli
By Declan Finn
From Declan Finn
Richard Paolinelli has written some great little books. My personal favorite is Escaping Infinity. It started out like David Weber, continued as written by Rod Serling, and ended with the epic scope of John C. Wright.
Here, Paolinelli has taken one of Dashiell Hammett’s most complex (maybe convoluted) novel, moved it into space, and and decided “Nah. This was too easy. Let’s up the stakes.
Brian Heming says:
Fedoras. Trenchcoats. Space cigarettes. Space dames. A hard-boiled detective. Fistfights. Spaceships. Honestly, you could’ve just said “space dames” and I would’ve coughed up my money.
Considering the popularity of pulp detective noir wizards (or one particular wizard, Mr. Dresden), the genre of pulp detective noir in space is tragically underserved. Fundamentally, a hard-boiled detective in space is awesome in of itself. But when multi-genre master Richard Paolinelli takes on the tropes, we end up with far more than the sum of the parts: a pulp noir detective in all his hardboiled glory saving the galaxy in the style of the best space opera.
