Jason Kane is on trial for his life, accused of stealing the legendary Purpura Pawn – and only his friends can save him.
Jason Kane is on trial for his life, accused of stealing the legendary Purpura Pawn – and only his friends can save him.
A Life in Pieces
Zardox Break
Big Finish Productions Limited., it must be noted, has no connection with MegaStel Enterprise whatsoever.
We therefore have a slightly different arrangement, with Professor Bernice Summerfield, as regards the whole subject of rolling around in bed and doing it and stuff.
There’s something special about Dave Stone’s writing, in that it pacts incredibly dense complicated ideas in short, amusing, inventive ways, glorifying in simple absurdities to try and make you overlook that larger ones. Despite everything though he has a natural grasp on his characters who fly through what has to be his most accessible written text for the range yet.
As told mostly from Bernice’s perspective, she arrives on Zardox for a holiday with her husband to find there are things he has neglected to tell her. Quite a lot of things as it happens, and with every chapter Dave Stone throws a new curveball that completely alters the story. The real plot isn’t apparent until half way through, but that hardly matters because the journey is key. Dave Stone’s self referential narration is a continual delight, and the plot is paced just right to keep it moving forwards.
Not everything is perfect though. The weakest part of the story may involve a brutal stabbing, which is never seen and the attacker only vaguely referenced offhand. Perhaps noticing that for this key moment an attacker comes out of the blue, does something, and then is never mentioned again, he gives us a clever prologue to explain the backstory of one ‘Humphrey Pumpkin’. This is endemic of many of Dave’s Stones creations though, initially amusing, existent to serve a specific purpose, and then tossed aside once the joke has worn thin.
In just 72 pages Dave Stone throws at us a tourism planet, alien shapeshifting lechers, a murderous girl band, a celebrity lifestyle program, a reference back to his own ‘Demon Dimension Jason Backstory’, a case of celebrity stalking, an evil genius with a suitably nefarious plot, plenty of legal wrangling and a fashion hairstylist who actually lives up to expectations. Throughout all of this none of it really matters, Bernice and Jason, and their relationship, is key.
9 / 10
The Purpura Pawn
After the off the wall magical fairytale adventure of Zardox Break, Paul Sutton shows us something much more down to earth. It’s a fairly straightforward detective story, with a hard-bitten gumshoe copper unravelling a crime scene where everyone has something to hide and something to gain. Braxiatel is there, called to help a troubled politician eager to keep his gambling habits at bay. Also present are Bev and Adrian Wall, the unlikely pairing from an earlier short story that suggested they might actually make a good pairing. This is probably the best characterisation we’ve seen so far of Adrian is text, he’s interesting and constantly surprising, this novella lifting him from recurring character series central mainstay. He’s seen usually from Bev’s perspective though, which is apt considering she fits much more snugly into the story about a world of underworld crime.
The plot plays out as a rather pedestrian, yet very emotional, tragedy in which one honourable criminal is betrayed by another one who goes on the run. This revenge plot is mirrored by the machinations of Braxiatel who never really explains what he wants.
At the end the marvellous twist is that the Purpura Pawn never really was on earth. That Oleson’s profession wasn’t what you expected was implicit from the start but that he turned out to be a master forger… Excellent.
And any lingering doubts as to whether Brax really is evil or not, are probably lost at the word sluice.
8 / 10
On Trial
After two fairly independent stories it falls upon Joseph Lister to tie everything together. Jason has been arrested for murder and the killer was not out on the run on earth. He comes up trumps with a brand new but very real character in Kristoffa Tailor, a political obsessive searching for truth forty years after the fact, absolutely certain that Jason Kane murdered the man he idolised.
Joseph Lidster fills the story with a lot of political anger, and slowly filling out the truth but struggling to accept anything that disagrees with the facts as Kris sees them. The facts are told twice, once from his research and once from Bernice’s diary which he somehow comes across.
Everything in Jason’s defence hinges on the events of the Mirror Effect, and without that play working out what might have happened in Mark Morton’s room could be confusing. That’s a small complaint for an excellent mystery that Joseph Lidster delightfully refuses to satisfactorily answer.
9 / 10
—–
A Life in Pieces is an excellent collection which pushes together three excellent adventures within an extremely well crafted mystery. It brings out the best characters of the range (Jason, Adrian, Bev, Brax) and gives them all a chance to shine in a new, intelligent way. It’s futuristic, realistic, mad yet completely rational. Recommended for anyone.
9 / 10