Looking For a Good Book

I read a fair amount of Michael Moorcock, having been really fascinated by his hero, Elric, an albino prince in a fantasy land, and then relishing his Eternal Champion, which combined the familiar (to me) Elric other characters in Moorcock’s body of work. Somehow, however, I missed the first book in Moorcock’s “Metatemporal Detective” series. I picked this book up because of what I expected was obvious … this must be a new Elric novel. I mean, ‘albino’ and ‘Michael Moorcock’ – how could it be anything else? But it is something else.

It is the early 1930’s and Detective Sir Seaton Begg and his trusty associate, Doctor Sinclair, are sent undercover to Istanbul by Britain’s Temporal Agency – a highly secretive organization. They are looking for the Red King who leads a group of assassins who are planning to take control of the entire world.

Also in Istanbul are Nazi forces – a recently formed but growing arm of the German forces. Their presence will make things much more difficult to Begg and Sinclair who will begin to see how dangerous these men might become.

Istanbul is a city in the pangs of transition, going from the familiar ancient city into a modern one. As such, it is a microcosm of the world in general, with the growing pains of assassinations constantly at their heels.

One man could be their most useful ally … Monsieur Zenith, the albino … Begg’s most feared nemesis.

This is a book that I will have to read again because, honestly, I was maybe a fifth of the way in, very confused, waiting for Elric and wondering why we were in a place where there were Nazis, before I realized, or more accurately, accepted that this was not an Elric novel. Accepting this and moving on, I recognized that it was a Sherlock Holmes pastiche but with a Moorcock flair of subtle reality bending. And then it began to work for me.

And then… And then it made me wonder if it wasn’t an Elric novel after all.

Oh, yes. Moorcock bends and blends realities like nobody else, and whether or not the albino here is Elric in one of his dream states.

What I’ve come to realize since reading this, is that Monsieur Zenith, the albino, is actually a character created by Anthony Skene for his Sexton Blake detective series, appearing as early as 1893. Zenith is “full of an ennui which can only be relieved by opium, danger and adventure” (https://everything.explained.today/Monsieur_Zenith/). Zenith, it turns out, was a major influence in Moorcock’s creating Elric, which would explain why I couldn’t help note the similarities. And Detective Sexton Blake? Is Moorcock trying to avoid copyright ownership with his own Detective Seaton Begg?

The more I looked into the background of Monsieur Zenith, the more interested I became in what Moorcock was doing. Hence my interest in rereading this.

But beyond my curiosity in whether or not one of the characters was secretly one of Moorcock’s most famous characters, I did find the book moved slowly. Too slowly. For a pulp fiction detective working for a clandestine temporal agency, I would hope for swifter movement action, but this spent too much time with the characters being curious and cautious.

I’ve since ordered a copy of the first book in the Metatemporal Detective series (published in 2007)  as well as a few Sexton Blake books. Maybe familiarizing myself with these will help me enjoy this book more the next time.

Looking for a good book? The Albino’s Secret by Michael Moorcock and Mark Hodder is a fantastical detective novel with a Holmes and Watson-like duo going up against an army of assassins and some Nazis in modern day Istanbul. Like a lot of Moorcock’s books, one reading might not suffice.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.

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The Albino’s Secret

author: Michael Moorcock and Mark Hodder 

series: The Metatemporal Detective

publisher: Gollancz

ISBN: 9781399627443

hardcover, 416 pages