Brainz, Inc.

Odd Jobs, Inc #4

by Ron Goulart

A dead woman hires Jake to investigate her murder
Jake Pace is halfway through mixing a batch of cookies when his lawyer arrives with a corpse. The body in the coffin is an android, built in the shape of recently deceased electronics heiress Sylvie Kirkyard and implanted with a chip that holds Sylvie’s memories. Although she was only twenty-seven, Sylvie had for a long time feared for her life, and took the precaution of insuring her consciousness with Kirktronics’ patented Brainz, Inc. method. Upon her death, the chip was implanted in this electronic body, and the body was brought to Jake. Luckily, as the planet’s smartest private detective, Jake is used to corpses—robotic and otherwise. When the dead girl awakes and asks him to find her killers, Jake doesn’t blink an eye. But fulfilling her last request will be perilous, and by the time it’s over Jake may wish he had a spare body of his own.

Genres: Science Fiction, Humor, Fiction

174 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 7, 1985

About the author

Pseudonyms: Howard Lee; Frank S Shawn; Kenneth Robeson; Con Steffanson; Josephine Kains; Joseph Silva; William Shatner.
Ron Goulart is a cultural historian and novelist. Besides writing extensively about pulp fiction—including the seminal Cheap Thrills: An Informal History of Pulp Magazines (1972)—Goulart has written for the pulps since 1952, when the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction published his first story, a sci-fi parody of letters to the editor. Since then he has written dozens of novels and countless short stories, spanning genres and using a variety of pennames, including Kenneth Robeson, Joseph Silva, and Con Steffanson. In the 1990s, he became the ghostwriter for William Shatner’s popular TekWar novels. Goulart’s After Things Fell Apart (1970) is the only science-fiction novel to ever win an Edgar Award.

In the 1970s Goulart wrote novels starring series characters like Flash Gordon and the Phantom, and in 1980 he published Hail Hibbler, a comic sci-fi novel that began the Odd Jobs, Inc. series. Goulart has also written several comic mystery series, including six books starring Groucho Marx. Having written for comic books, Goulart produced several histories of the art form, including the Comic Book Encyclopedia (2004).

Reviews

[Mikepottz · Rating 3 out of 5]

The last book in this series. Jake bakes cookies. Nice. The year is 2004. Jake and Hildy owners and operators of Odd Job, inc have a new client. A company called Brain, Inc. is able to transfer the contents of a human brain into a tiny silicon chip and inserted into an android that looks like you and giving you immortality. That only costs 50 million bucks. Co-owner of Brain, inc wakes up an android and wants to know who murdered her. A super medicine called Kure can supposedly cure all problems. Acne, TB, even cancer. Sweet. Jakes vanity gets him kidnapped, he was been stunned multiple times and his smoking hot wife saves his ass again. Rating the four books. 2, 1, 3, 4. I think.

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jake and Hildy Pace are the owners and operators of Odd Jobs, Inc., private detectives who investigate the bizarre and strangest cases in the future world of 2004. They're Goulart's version of Nick and Nora Charles, and among his best and most memorable characters. Goulart's America is a madcap and absurd land that he uses to satirize and parody everything that he can imagine, and his imagination is quite formidable. This is another fun adventure from the first page (which finds Jake baking cookies and Hildy playing Mozart on the banjo) to the last (which closes as they decide to celebrate the fact that there are no malfunctioning androids in their happy marriage.)

[Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

Typical Goulart, making fun of vegans, Californians, hard-boiled detectives, greedy capitalists, lawyers, wealthy people and movie stars.

He's just a lot of fun to read!

[Stephen Rowland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Goulart is inspired with this one. So many of his books are by-the-numbers, and this one is too, but it's much funnier and caustic than many others.

[Thomas Hale · Rating 1 out of 5]

A real waste of a fun premise: married detectives in a satire-infused 80s cyberpunk dystopia. An android double of a murdered heiress hires them to solve her own murder! Disguises, larger-than-life-characters, endless neologisms! Shame that the jokes are dreadful and dated, the witty banter isn't witty, the plot is totally uninteresting, and the whole thing has the flop-sweat stink of bad sketch comedy. What a shame. Maybe the previous books in the series are tolerable?

[Ian Hamilton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brainz, Inc. is another “dumb,” pulpy, formulaic book by Goulart, but it’s funny-as-hell.

[Tentatively, Convenience · Rating 3 out of 5]

See my review of "Wildsmith".