Sci Fi

Yellowthread Street #6

by William Marshall

Batman is throwing up in one cell, while the Green Slime keeps escaping from another. Constable Yan is locked in combat with the Incredible Hulk – or is it Wonder Woman? Yes, the Sci Fi and Horror Movie convention has come to Hong Kong and an awful lot (literally) of the aliens have landed in the Hong Bay nick. It’s the usual chaos, with added Martians.

But then a Spaceman with a terrifying flame gun appears – there’s something in the Empress of India hotel he wants, and DCI Feiffer and team had better not stand in his way. Not unless they want to end up toast.

In William Marshall’s classic series, the characterful cops of Yellowthread Street wage everlasting war against violent crime in the back alleys of old Hong Kong – often tragic and always surreally comic.

Praise for the Yellowthread Street series:

“Marshall has the rare gift of juggling scary suspense and wild humor and making them both work.” Washington Post Book World

“Marshall’s style – blending the hilarious, the surreal, and the poignant – remains inimitable and not easily resisted.” San Francisco Chronicle

“Marshall has few peers as an author who melds the wildest comedy and tragedy in narratives of nonstop action.” Publishers Weekly

“Marshall is building a growing, iconoclastic body of work that mixes weird fantasy [and] wayward characterization . . . to produce a subtle, charged, atmospheric, lush fiction hybrid sure to satisfy those with a taste for mysteries on the far edges.” Philadelphia Inquirer

“Despite the wild humor, Marshall’s stories contain excellent police procedure, real suspense, and fine irony . . . incessantly scary.” Chicago Tribune

“Among the best police procedural series on the market.” Detroit Free Press

“As an inspired poet of the bizarre, [Marshall] orchestrates underlying insanity into an apocalyptic vision of the future.” New York Times Book Review

“Marshall’s novels feature seemingly supernatural events that turn out to have logical, if not precisely rational, origins. He has savage fun with police procedure.” TIME

“Nobody rivals Marshall’s ability to expose the links between comic hysteria and the most mundane human foibles, from greed to cowardice to simple funk.” Kirkus Reviews

“Moves at the speed of a bullet; don’t read it aloud or you’ll run out of breath.” Chicago Sun-Times

Genres: Mystery, Fiction

202 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

William Marshall (or William Leonard Marshall) (born 1944, Australia) is an Australian author, best known for his Hong Kong-based "Yellowthread Street" mystery novels, some of which were used as the basis for a British TV series.

Reviews

[Vasha7 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of all Marshall's madcap, violently absurdist Hong Kong police stories, this may be one of the oddest. Completely lacking in logic and plausibility (especially the hyperbolic finale), but so what.

[Linda Chrisman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wish these were better known - they are hilarious & bittersweet & just crazy!

[Kathryn McCary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sixth of the Yellowthread Street mysteries. As always, frenetic and compelling, even when you just don't believe a word of it.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

William Marshall’s Sci-Fi isn’t sci-fi. It is an early eighties police procedural set in British Hong Kong. Influenced by Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series, the cops from the Yellowthread Street station are a culturally mixed bag of oddballs that remind me of characters from MASH as much as they do McBain’s New Yorkers. Sci-Fi has a hilarious opening scene in which the station runs out of cells to put costumed miscreants from the All-Asia Science Fiction convention. There is a green blob with burglar tools, an enticing jar with a million dollars, and a spaceman in an asbestos suit with a flamethrower. Violence happens, and brains get teased.

[TheIron Paw · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely not a mainstream mystery/police procedural. There may be a hole or two in the plot, but what the heck, I won't let that get in the way of enjoying a complicated and imaginative plot. The characters are the same as the other Yellowthread street novels, and remain just as quirky and, paradoxically, realistic. A superior read.

[Pat · Rating 5 out of 5]

(I own this in hardcover and also Kobo ebook.) Typical Marshall, with odd mysteries and eccentric characters. (The Green Slime constantly escaping his cell by picking the lock with wooden matches and knotted string is what I remember best about the book.) I enjoy mysteries set around media conventions, and this one is fun. With a layer of tragedy, as Marshall often did.

[Ronald Wilcox · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting premise and setting (science fiction convention at a hotel in Asia) but the story was very difficult (to me) to follow. May read another in the series but was not impressed this time. Have read good things about this author before though.