The Dead Man's Brother

by Roger Zelazny, Trent Zelazny (Afterword)

Once an art smuggler, now a respectable art dealer, Ovid Wiley awoke to find his former partner stabbed to death on his gallery floor. That was strange enough—but when a CIA agent showed up to spring him from NYPD custody, things got a lot stranger.

Now the CIA is offering to clear up the murder charge but only in return for a favor: They want Ovid to fly to Vatican City and trace the trail of a renegade priest who has gone missing with millions in church funds. What’s the connection? The priest’s lover, a woman Ovid knew in his smuggling days…

Genres: Mystery, Crime, Fiction, Thriller, Adventure, Pulp, Noir

256 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2009

About the author

Roger Joseph Zelazny was an American fantasy and science fiction writer known for his short stories and novels, best known for The Chronicles of Amber. He won the Nebula Award three times (out of 14 nominations) and the Hugo Award six times (also out of 14 nominations), including two Hugos for novels: the serialized novel ...And Call Me Conrad (1965), subsequently published under the title This Immortal (1966), and the novel Lord of Light (1967).

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ovid Wiley comes home to find a man dead in his gallery home. The CIA swoops in just in time to save him from local law enforcement by offering him a deal: to find the former priest who stole three million dollars from the Vatican. Luckily, he knows a woman in Rome and she happens to be the ex girlfriend of the man he found murdered in his home. The deal gets him shot at in Italy, tortured by corrupt cops, and chased through the jungles of Brazil. What other perils await him on his search for The Dead Man's Brother?

Zelazny's stories usually twist and turn like a serpent and this one is no exception. Ovid Wiley is one of Zelanzy's usual protagonists; smart, capable, and deep, but far from infallible. Zelanzy's writing is as sharp as it ever was. It's a shame this book wasn't published during his lifetime.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a real fan of Zelazny & to read a new book by him 14 years after his death is just fantastic. My hopes were set very high & I hoped they wouldn't be dashed as they have been with other books of his finished by or written with others. They weren't. This is pure Zelazny.

As his son, Trent, notes in the afterword, their best guess as to the date this was written is in the early 70's, about the time "My Name is Legion" & "Today We Choose Faces" was written. "Doorways in the Sand" was published in 1976. All of these books are mystery thrillers with SF elements. So a pure mystery thriller from him is a delight, but no huge surprise.

I was quickly captured by the book, re-reading the first chapter (sample chapter online at http://hardcasecrime.com/books_bios.c... ). It opens with a thrilling mystery & just gets better all the time.

The style is definitely Zelazny's. Many off hand references to the classics, art & there are several places where if you can't translate Latin, you'll want to or you'll lose a bit of the story. You don't have to know classical art to get the story, but if you have a reference handy, it does add to the story. Luckily, my wife has 2 degrees in art, so we have several good references.

The wrap-up was a bit of a disappointment. The plot was more complicated than is normal for him which made sorting it all out at the end a little rushed & confused. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't the simple, elegant finish of his that I've come to expect. The very end is quite chilling & - IMO - perfect!

I highly recommend this to any Zelazny fan. My copy arrived from Amazon in the mail yesterday & I read the entire book last night, so it's a fairly quick read (260 pages). I really hated to put it down for dinner!

[Robert · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've never read a dull Zelazny, before. That might explain why the manuscript was forgoten for decades... I gave up circa p60.

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an unusual departure from Zelazny's usual work, a novel of international intrigue and suspense that starts with the discovery of a body in a small art gallery in New York City and then chases itself to Vatican City and into a remote section of the Amazon rain forest, with bits of deception of misdirection along the way, before coming full circle for a conclusion. In his fine afterword Trent Zelazny says that the manuscript, which had never been previously published, was found by his father's agent, and that it probably dates from 1970. This leads to the assumption that if it were a really good book, the agent would have sold it and it would have appeared fifty years ago. It does read like something of a first draft, with some odd pacing problems and a convoluted web of tangled character motivation and some repetitive phrases. (For example, it feels like the protagonist and narrator, Ovid Wiley, talks about lighting a cigarette several times on every page.) Too, there are a couple of things that are introduced that aren't really developed and end up not going anywhere, such as a discussion of his family and his possession of a good luck gene. And would the CIA really blackmail an art gallery owner into going to The Vatican to investigate a theft instead of just sending one of their agents? But, aside from wishing that some editorial direction had resulted in Zelazny making a second pass through the manuscript to clear up some of these items, I really enjoyed the story once I got into it. There were some flashes of Zelazny's humor, wit, and lyrical prose, such as "I felt as conspicuous as a good painting in the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art." on page 233, and at one point Ovid mentions babysitting his nephew once. He gave the boy a drum to play with, and then, twenty minutes later, gives him a pocket knife and tells him that most boys' drums come filled with candy. It was a shame that the nephew got one of the empty ones... I could just picture Zelazny writing that with a grin on his face and a glint in his eye. Zelazny was a terrific storyteller, and though this one has a kind of rough-around-the-edges feel to it, it's a fun story for suspense fans as well as Zelazny completests.

[El · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hot-diggity-dog. This is the genre Zelazny was meant to write. Not that pesky sci-fi stuff.

Anyone who has been following me here for a while knows I have some issues with Zelazny. To be fair, I'm not all that experienced in science fiction, which is disgusting considering I grew up surrounded by people reading science fiction, talking about science fiction, watching science fiction shows on TV, etc. It was never my bag, ya dig. Strangely, though, I'm in a relationship with someone who really is into the genre, and Zelazny is his brother-from-another-mother. So I read Zelazny's Amber books so I could see what the whole fuss was about, and holy cats, I was not impressed. I was bored. I managed to read all the original Amber books, but I really wasn't into it that much. I can't even remember much about them now other than to recall how little I cared for Zelazny's writing. But to be fair, I read some other Zelazny books, like Jack of Shadows, and again I wondered who was wrong, me or the boyfriend. (Be nice.) And then when I compare Zelazny to someone amazing like freaking Frank Herbert and his Dune books... well, there is no comparison. It's like apples and oranges and I can't believe that someone as intelligent as my boyfriend can even group Zelazny and Herbert in the same sentence -- and... breathe.

So, same boyfriend comes home on Friday nearly peeing his pants because he came across this book at the bookstore where he works, and he's never seen it, and I got this whole dissertation about how he thought maybe it was a Harrison Denmark novel (Zelazny's pseudonym and very difficult to find things under that name), and OMG how cool. (For the record, the Afterword by Zelazny's son makes no mention of Harrison Denmark at all, and it seems this manuscript was just found randomly one day.)

And it sort of is cool. I like these Hard Case Crime books. They're not life-altering or anything, but I like me a good pulp story. And this one doesn't disappoint. It's actually exciting. "Exciting" was a word that was lacking from my discussions of the Zelazny books, and the argument my boyfriend and I have most often when we make the mistake of discussing Zelazny. But this is more my style, much more my speed. I actually felt like I could catch a glimpse of the author himself in the writing, which is weird because real Zelazny fans say that the reason they love him so much is because he's so accessible and you can feel him in his writing, man. I don't know about that, but this was the first time I could maybe, possibly, almost understand what they're getting at. I'm sad that this is perhaps the only of it's kind. If his peeps find more manuscripts like this one, I'd be interested in reading them. As it stands, I will probably read a Zelazny from time-to-time so I can talk with my boyfriend about it, and I'll continue to ignore the fact that he hasn't read any Margaret Atwood or Annie Dillard for me yet, but the promise is still there.

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zelazny was best known as a science-fiction writer -- and, in fact, this spy story does have what may or may not be a throwaway SF element in the suggestion that Ovid Wiley has a genetic predisposition towards "good luck" that enables him to catch the lucky breaks (guns jamming and so forth) that help him survive. But that's not a point Zelazny dwells on much, preferring to settle into a structurally by-the-book, but inventively detailed, international intrigue: Ovid Wiley, an art thief turned gallery owner, is "invited" by the CIA to help investigate the disappearance of a priest who'd been embezzling from the Vatican, and one of the first people he encounters is the girlfriend of his former partner-in-crime (who, I should've mentioned, shows up dead on the floor of Ovid's gallery on page one, setting all this in motion).

Despite some neat sytlistic flourishes, Zelazny doesn't reinvent the wheel here; then again, he doesn't have to. He simply delivers a better-than-average thriller with as much entertainment value as you'll find just about anywhere else in the field. It may, however, make you wish he'd done more in this vein...

[Natalia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm so glad this book got dug out of whatever closet shelf or desk drawer it was hiding in. First and foremost, it's a rollicking good time of a pulp crime novel, but I was constantly surprised by how smart it was. Starting with the protagonist named after Ovid the poet, to the references to the art world, Vatican intrigues, and indigenous cultures in Brazil... it's preposterous, but not stupid.

Best of all, I didn't figure out the actual scheme until it was revealed in the book. Part of it was the above-mentioned preposterousness, but the rest of it was Zelazny being able to craft a really excellent sinister web of interlocking plots.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very nice regular-guy-caught-up-in-international-intrigue story from the late, great Roger Zelazny. OK, maybe not a regular guy, as I can't see most art thieves having the savvy to murder a Brazilian mercenary in the pitch-black Amazon jungle after two days of no sleep. Still, an enjoyable story.

[Teri-K · Rating 1 out of 5]

Picked this up at the thrift store because I enjoy old adventure stories and recognized the author's name. It was almost worth the 49 cents I paid... The characters are cardboard, the hero hardly does anything, the plot lagged, the setting was generic. I'm not upset, because I knew this was published after his death, and usually there's a reason for that. Still, this will be gong back to the thrift store.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Dead Man’s Brother by Roger Zelazny is another non-cozy mystery found during the great cozy hunt. Mind, I already knew it wasn't a cozy. That cover says "non-cozy" as clearly as ever a cover did, and, besides, I really can't see Zelazny writing a tidy little tale about murder in the local bakery(1).

Dead Man's Brother is firmly noir, which presents me with a bit of a problem: I do read noir, but only very occasionally, so I can say "This is noir," but I cannot comment knowledgeably about the precise flavor thereof. It's got manly men, it's got shady dealings, it's got violence, and a beautiful woman to complicate life. Oh, and there's revenge, and recompense, and a very low-key sort of "doing the right thing." And, it's by Zelazny. That last counts for a lot. It may come up again.

What's it about? Ovid Wiley, now the respectable owner of an art gallery, was once an art thief. There is limited evidence linking his present life to his past--until his former partner turns up dead in the gallery, and the CIA seems intent on framing him for the killing, unless he helps them with a small favor in Italy. It seems a priest has embezzled some funds. A lot of funds. The Vatican doesn't want any official involvement or fuss because it is embarrassing. So all Ovid has to do is quietly and unofficially poke around and see if he can't find out. If he does, the murder charge will go away, and he'll never have to worry about the body in his gallery. So Ovid, who is not at all happy, goes to Italy. There is a beautiful woman. Things get violent. Ovid gets even less happy, makes a trip to Brazil, and solves matters his own, highly unofficial, violent way.

This is unmistakable Zelazny, with his trademark mix of the pulp and the poetic (Is there such a thing as literary pulp? If there isn't, there should be). Ovid reminded me quite a bit of Corwin from the Chronicles of Amber, minus the bit about being pretty nearly a divinity. He does, however, have uncommon luck; reading The Dead Man's Brother, I could not decide whether it was good or bad, but it was certainly uncommon, and he ran through quite a lot of it in the course of the novel. Like Corwin, too, he cares little for the law, though unlike Corwin, he has no family ties to complicate matters.

All in all, a satisfactory sort of read. Dead Man's Brother is not my favorite Zelazny(2), and this is probably the only time I will read it, but I am glad I did. After all, it is by Zelazny. Have I mentioned that yet?

---
(1) Not that I knew Zelazny wrote mysteries at all, but then, from the afterward, neither did his publishers, not until after he died.
(2) So far, my favorite Zelazny is A Night in the Lonesome October. See
my reviewhere, at The Geek Girl Project, if you're interested in hearing about why. It made a lovely Halloween book, but I'm likely to pick it up at other times as well.

Note: This review and others are up on my blog,

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most people know Zelazny as the author of the Chronicles of Amber, a fantasy series about back-stabbing immortal siblings who fight each other for their father’s throne, and fend off the Courts of Chaos to keep that throne theirs. But this isn’t about that book. It’s about a Zelazny manuscript which was ostensibly written in 1971 and found a few years ago by his agent, published under the Hard Case label in 2009, titled The Dead Man’s Brother.

The plot revolves around Ovid Wiley, an art smuggler turned respectable dealer, who wakes up one morning to find an old partner of his dead on his gallery floor. Things get weirder when the CIA offers to clear his murder charge in exchange for a favor: fly to the Vatican City and track a rogue priest who’s made off with millions of the Vatican’s money. Ovid becomes even more enmeshed when the priest’s lover turns out to be Maria, former lover to his dead ex-partner in crime. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The best part about this book is that it feels like authentic old Zelazny. The tone of a competent, no-nonsense scoundrel enmeshed in a larger web reminds me of the first few Amber chapters, where the protagonist Corwin wakes up in a hospital with amnesia and must piece together his situation through wit and mindpower, and by conning his relations into not realizing he doesn’t remember them. Corwin finds out he’s Amberite royalty and goes off to make his bid for the crown, but I have the feeling Zelazny wrote it with a mystery-noir feel for a reason. The Dead Man’s Brother carries the same tone and resonance; Ovid reminds me a lot of Corwin in his unflappable nature, a stoic, rational character who is unperturbed by finding his ex-partner’s body on his floor. In short, I feel like this novel is what the first Amber book would be like if Zelazny had stuck with mystery noir rather than moving the plot into ’70s epic fantasy.

Sadly, the book feels very rough and partly unfinished. Let me rephrase that. The book reads like an unfinished manuscript. Which, coincidentally, it is. Dead Man’s Brother feels a bit too average, lackluster compared to the Zelazny’s other works (and other crime thrillers). A bit muddled in the middle and unconvincing at the end. It’s still a solid read with a fast-paced plot, but it’s just lacking the spark of greatness. Perhaps that’s why Zelazny shelved it. In any event, it was a definite good read, and a good mystery, though don’t expect Zelazny’s Hugo-award winning writing from a long-lost unpublished manuscript.

Full review (and other Hard Case reviews) found here.

[KG · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel almost unfaithful by not giving 4-5 stars to a Zelazny book. And, this really was a pretty good story. I think it was because Roger (if I may dare to be so familiar with one of my literary idols!) was testing the waters for this genre, that it didn't work any better as a story - - yet, it worked well enough. Still, UNQUESTIONABLY, the writing was superb! Nobody can turn a phrase like Mr. Z!!! If an author makes me re-read a sentence/paragraph - it had DAMN-well better be because it is so brilliantly created that I just have to stop and admire the thinking behind the grammatical construction - and NOT for lack of clarity. Nothing pisses me off more than cliché writing! There were SO many clever constructions, unique expressions, and intelligent phrasings. Reading Roger Zelazny is ALWAYS an instructive adventure! That said - the characters were not all that memorable. The primary characters were unique enough, but the secondary characters were almost invisible - such that, when they resurfaced 30-50 pages later - you really didn't recall them very well. That's not usually the case w/ a Zelazny story. To that, I attribute the novelty of the genre for his writing style. You just gotta get the feel for it when you drive a different vehicle. So, I'm totally cutting him that slack! I really couldn't give it 4 stars due to the lack of character development, which made the plot drag, for me. But, the merit of the writing is undeniable. The story was clever - albeit a bit meandering in its complexity. But, good for him, though, trying a different medium! He always builds tension and conflict nicely - and a True Crime story actually fits well into the atmospheres we've come to expect from his works. I'm glad he (probably) resisted putting an alien, a spaceship, or a mage into the mix. Writers need to flex their styles! It's a worthwhile read, all things considered! We miss you, Roger Zelazny! Thanx for sending your loyal fans this recently-discovered (pub. 2011) gem...from the great beyond!

[Craig Childs · Rating 1 out of 5]

A real mess of a novel. If not for the fact that this was a lost manuscript from a popular, acclaimed, and now-deceased author, this dog would never have found a publisher. It was bad on numerous levels, including (SPOILER ALERT):

1. A silly subplot about how the narrator, Ovid Wiley, has a "lucky genome" that allows him to continually escape dangerous situations. This plays almost no role in the plot as it unfolds, but it only provides a convenient excuse for why the CIA went to highly implausible lengths to manipulate Ovid into doing their dirty work (rather than using, you know, an actual trained agent).

2. Uneven pacing. Several important scenes, such as Ovid waking up one morning to find a dead body in his house, are rushed and glossed over. Other less important scenes drag on for several pages, such as repetitive police interrogations and discourses about the living conditions of indigenous Indians in Brazil.

3. One Amazing Coincidence. The entire resolution of several mysteries hinges on the fact that Maria fakes a break-up with her boyfriend and then seeks a rebound relationship with another man in order to dispel suspicion that she is still in cohoots with her first boyfriend's blackmail scheme. The Amazing Coincidence is this: her first boyfriend is blackmailing an art gallery that is colluding with a group of Brazilian insurgents to smuggle priceless artwork; her second boyfriend just happens to also be stealing millions of dollars from the Vatican and diverting it to the exact same group of Brazilian insurgents! Wow, what are the odds?

4. Unresolved questions. So, who killed the CIA agent in Europe, and why? One has to assume it was the art smugglers, this is the only explanation that makes any sense, but this is never clearly answered. Nor is it explained how or why or by whom the leader of the art smugglers, Bruno, is killed? Was it really an auto accident? Did the CIA do it?

One of my least favoriate Hard Case Crime novels.

[Randy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I believe there's a reason this went unpublished for 40+ years.

*A few minor spoilers, not that you'll really give a damn*

So Trent Zelanzy tells this story of a publisher or editor or someone finding this unpublished manuscript of his father's. I think it's telling that the only house that would publish it is some small-time mystery/action firm.

This really isn't a very good book. It's a typically convoluted international spy/mystery sort of thing, written in the typical Zelazny sophisticated tough guy first person style. But the character isn't really engaging the way that classic Zelazny protagonists are. He's kind of an asshole, like they all are, but without nearly as many of the redeeming qualities of a Corwin or a Maha-Sam-Atman. Plus, there's virtually no explanation of how this art smuggler-turned art-dealer became so familiar with weaponry or jungle environments, so his supercompetency at everything struck me as something of a egotistical exercise.

Maybe my view is biased because I don't care for continent-spanning mysteries, but after the action leaves Italy I really wasn't engaged in the course of events. Too much is left out for thereader to have a clue what the hell is going on, and what is going on isn't very interesting. Further, Zelazny teases a supernatural ability influence that vanishes from the narrative until the very end, and has little or no effect on the actual turn of events (other than being a potential deus ex machina).

Even the usual tough-but-poetic Zelazny descriptions are few and far between, replaced all too often by generic mystery prose. "The Doors of His Face..." this ain't.

My feeling is that Zelazny had this plot idea in him that wouldn't go away, so he wrote a draft to get it out of his system, then re-read it and went "Meh." And it rightfully mouldered in a box or whatever until it was mistakenly resurrected.

For Zelazny completists only.

[brian dean · Rating 3 out of 5]

After the first twenty pages:
I've been a Zelazny fan since I started to buy my own books. I don't think he is as famous as Tolkien but he has had a similar number of books published after his death.

I think Dead Man's Brother was written early in Zelazny's career -I've just started it so I am not describing the writing style, but what I have heard- and it sat in his files until after his death.

Zelazny was one of the Science Fiction and Fantasy greats and this 'hard case crime' novel with the scantily clad, well-defined young woman on the cover sure feels like an experiment or a dare.

Finished:
The story was good; well-plotted and with the twists necessary for this kind of book. The problem I had going into it was my enjoyment of his many science fiction and fantasy books. The subject matter was just a little too mundane.

Still, there were science-fictiony/ Fantasy-ish elements. The lead character had been observed for several years by a research group. It seems he was the opposite of accident-prone. Well, he had been in many accidents but escaped them all with hardly a scratch. This point, among others, made him attractive to the CIA who needed someone for ... something.

The story was good, but not unique. Zelazny's Lord of Light, for which he won many awards, was able to mix very creative, imaginative elements with a rewriting of Hindu myths and act as a metaphor for the British Raj period of India. This story used the proper cliches for the genre - Vatican gold and mercenaries in the jungle, but didn't really do anything new with them.

I wasn't thrilled with it but i may reread it again someday to see if I hadn't missed something. i expected more from a favorite author.

Oh, the editing was spotty, too. There were at least two spelling errors that jumped out at me as I read.

[Dave · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Dead Man's Brother" was an unfinished mansuscript, perhaps written in 1971, and never published until after Zelazny's passing. Although it has a few hardboiled elements (particularly in the first chapter), the book is primarily a spy thriller that takes the protagonist Ovid through three continents as an unwilling agent of the CIA. In that respect, it is fairly typical of sixties or seventies paperbacks, many of which jumped on the spy v. spy bandwagon made popular by Ian Fleming.

The story begins with a very hardboiled feel. Ovid wakes with an awful hangover only to find his former partner in art thievery dead in his house. How his former partner, who Ovid hasn't seen in years, got there, he hasn't a clue and how he died or why, he hasn't a clue either. The book opens with the line: "I decide to let him lie there, since he was not likely to bother anyone, and I went to the kitchen and made coffee." And, indeed, since very few people knew when Ovid's alarm goes off, he "figured he could be allowed to get a bit stiffer." After getting rid of the hippie-types who lived in the back house, Ovid calls the police, who, of course, put him through days of grueling interrogation before releasing him to the custody of the CIA, who purportedly will fix things if Ovid, who speaks three languages and has the genome for luck, will investigate millions of dollars that have been embezzled from the Vatican by a rogue priest and spirited off to Brazil.

Keeping in mind that this was merely a rough, unfinished manuscript that Zelazny never saw fit to publish in his lifetime, it was an okay read. There were a few parts like the beginning sequence that shined, but overall it was an effort to slog through it and a true disappoint as compared to my expectations for this work. It has produced some rather mixed reactions among other reviewers.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like thrillers, but I don't often read them. I do read Zelazny. This is an interesting mix: a novel by Zelazny that is outside his usual genres.

It is enjoyable on its own as a mystery; with Zelazny's prose it gets even better. I chuckled at various ways the author phrased things, and I love the small things like the drum story that make me laugh.

The plot moves quickly, it's well written and plotted; fun to read.

The story does involve some machinations - you never know who is working for whom and what side anybody is on. It keeps you guessing until the end (of course, I'm not really good at guessing these things).

I especially like the ending about how Ovid makes it clear he's going after Collins, eventually, and I tend to think Ovid's second guess about the death of Carl Bernini is the true one. (that Collins did him in and used it as a lever to get Mr. Wiley's cooperation)

I'd give it 5 stars but the convolutions in the plot are hard for me to keep straight as it all unfurls in the last chapter. Bassenrut vs Saci vs Mr. Bretagne vs CIA with the plight of the natives thrown in there to top it all off. All the motives of each of the players tends to get lost, but the fast pace and the action were enough to keep me thoroughly entertained as it all played out.

[Alazzar · Rating 3 out of 5]

After finishing The Dead Man's Brother, I can't help but think that some people were just meant to write in certain genres.

Don't get me wrong--I have so much faith in Zelazny's skills as a writer that I think he really could have written whatever he wanted and been successful. But I guess there's something to be said about expectations, because when I'm reading a Zelazny book, I feel like I should be getting something wildly imaginative. And by that, I mean something that pushes beyond the borders of reality as we know it.

The Dead Man's Brother wasn't really bad, but it wasn't anything I was overly excited about. The writing is still great, and I'll always love Zelazny's voice, but I found myself not getting sucked into the plot here as much as I have in his other novels. Overall, I'd say this book may just be my least favorite by Zelazny, though I'm still a long way from reading his entire collection as of now.

Anyway, I give the book three stars. And honestly, there's a chance it could have been higher if it hadn't been by Zelazny--I just expected too much of him, and didn't get everything I wanted.

[Metaphorosis · Rating 1 out of 5]

reviews.metaphorosis.com

1 stars

An undiscovered Zelazny novel! If you're an SF enthusiast, you long ago discovered Roger Zelazny's amazing talent. You've read Lord of Light, the Amber books, everything you could find. (check out The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny) So, when you run across something new, your heart races, your pulse pounds, you immediately click and order. Sure, international crime rings are not exactly the Zelazny you know and love, but the man was a genius - he could write!

Sadly, The Dead Man's Brother is also not the Zelazny you know and love. While it's fun to see Zelazny in a new genre, if this book were by anyone else, you'd give up after 50 pages. It's just a bad book - awkward characters, weak plot, and none of the fluid, near-poetic prose that characterizes his other work.

Unless you're a true Zelazny completist, don't buy this book. It will only tarnish your memory of one of SF's truly phenomenal talents. Instead, re-read Isle of the Dead and go to bed happy.

[Josh · Rating 2 out of 5]

Former art smuggler turned legitimate art dealer, Ovid Wiley is embroiled in international espionage courtesy of a Dan Brown-esque murder landing on his doorstep. Using the murder as leverage, the CIA present Ovid with an ultimation he cant refuse - locate a missing priest wanted for embezzling funds from the Vatican or face prison for the murder of a former associate at his gallery. Soon enough he's back in Italy and reacquainted with former partner in crime Maria on a fact finding mission with dire consequences.


Broken into two distinct acts, one in Italy, the other Brazil, 'The Dead Man's Brother' appealed to my sense of escapism and I lapped up the different settings with the Italy component being the far stronger of the two. However, it was as if Zelazny was trying too hard to weave plot threads together and make twists out of turns in the later stages of the novel which cast a shadow on a promising thriller. All in all, an ok entry into the Hardcase Crime archives that missed the boat by just enough to still be enjoyable but not overly good - 2.5 stars.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes, when you read a book, you get really excited ... not so much at the story, but at the crispness of the writing. This is such a book. It's no secret that I'm a fan of Zelazny, and reading this, you might understand why. I just couldn't help smile at the way Zelazny turns a phrase.

I'm not sure how one might categorize this book. It's not quite a mystery in the traditional sense of genre, but it's not quite an adventure novel in the vein of Mack Bolan or Doc Savage, but it's a cross between the two, I'd say. And being such, it's not a genre that I'd typically read.

The main character was intelligent and intriguing (reminded me a lot of many of Zelazny's main characters) and the initial 'bang' in the story had me interested, but as it went on, I cared less and less about the story itself. One chapter of nothing but torture added little other than a strong reason for revenge, and the constant travel-and-waiting grew tiresome.

I'm glad I read this but it's not something I'd recommend.

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1199052.html[return][return]It is a more or less non-sfnal thriller (I say 'more or less' because it is hinted that the narrator, being of course a Zelazny hero, has special abilities) set in contemporary (ie early 70s) Rome and Brazil. The Zelazny hard-bitten writing style is gloriously there. His narrator is more misogynistic than most Zelazny characters, but matures a bit in the course of the story. The cover is rather gloriously tacky, featuring our hero cradling the heroine while clutching a ridiculously phallic machete. In short, I enjoyed it, and would even recommend it as a gateway book for non-Zelazny fans.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Dead Man's Brother is a decent adventure story, but is both a little wordy for me, and the protagonist a bit hard to believe.
As far as the wordiness goes, it is not so much that it is written with horribly flowery descriptions. On that front, Zelazny is safe. However, his narrator describes every moment of the story in pain-staking and unnecessary minutia. Lines like,"And I ate and slept on the plane." Thanks for the update, guy, but it doesn't really add anything.
Also, the narrator goes to easily back and forth between being a normal, upper-class art dealer, and a savage, anarchist type. There's no way he could be both from the way I see it.
I did however like the ideas presented about luck and genetics. That seemed like it could have gone in an interesting way.

[Neil McCrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is wise to be wary of posthumously released novels, add to that fact that I'm only a middling fan of Zelazny in the first place and you might wonder why I picked it up. The short answer is that I enjoy it when genre authors tackle work outside of what they are famous for, and I really had no idea that Sci-fi/fantasy master Zelazny had ever attempted a crime novel.
So we have a retired international art thief, a priest embezzaling millions from the Vatican, and a bunch of Brazilian revolutionaries . . . click, click, whir . . . instant espionage thriller. There is nothing new here, but if you enjoy the genre RZ does it well. It is a fun, zippy read, good for a day's entertainment, and then quite forgettable.

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

The hero of The Dead Man's Brother, Ovid Wiley, is an art dealer and blowhard who has a rare genetic predisposition for luck in the face of death. His story might have been interesting if Roger Zelazny (who ordinarily was a science-fiction writer, after all), had focused his attention on Wiley's remarkable gift for survival. Instead, this detail is an afterthought in the novel's serpentine, borderline-nonsensical plot involving the CIA, the Vatican, and Brazilian revolutionaries. The fact that I forced myself to finish reading this dreck indicates that I, too, have a genetic gift, though mine seems to have something to do with masochism.

[Samantha Glasser · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ovid Wiley wakes up and finds a dead man in his apartment. He knows the man but does not know how he wound up there or how he wound up dead. Suddenly the US government wants his help on a secret mission to find a priest who smuggled a few million dollars to his brother in Brazil via purchasing art. Wiley's connections in the art world make him an ideal assistant, and his help will let him off in the murder case.

While this book moves quickly and wraps up a complicated story satisfactorily, it offers little outside of the routine to the crime enthusiast.

[Lynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn’t quite expect this book – famous science fiction author writes a thriller/murder mystery. Since it is Zelazny, he does a fine job of it, too. Our hero, Ovid Wiley, is blackmailed by the CIA into solving the theft of millions from the Vatican by a priest, and ends up travelling from New York to Rome to Brazil in the course of his investigation. This is a Cold War novel, and has a twist ending that I quite liked. Zelazny, as always, uses his wonderful way with prose to keep the pace up and the surprises coming. It’s not his best book, but it’s still good, and I enjoyed it.

[Johne · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm a huge, huge Zelazny fan. Therefore, it is with great sadness that I say I understand why he did not attempt to sell it. It has many of the vintage Zelazny touches, but none of the polished greatness. I was more frustrated than anything reading this, knowing what could have been had he come back to it later. It is worth reading for the true Zelazny fan, but I would keep expectations low and enjoy what you can of the glimpses of Roger's classic wit that peak through.

[William Gerke · Rating 3 out of 5]

A posthumously-discovered manuscript, "Dead Man's Brother" is a departure for Zelazny in that it is a straight international spy thriller. While not a stand-out in any respect, it's a fun little story, with Zelazny's usual lovely language. I took a bit of pleasure replacing the main character's name with Carl Corey and imagining this as one of amnesiac Corwin's adventures during his time on Shadow Earth.

[Rich · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gave up on this long ago. It's Zelazny at his worst not his best. Unlikable characters involved in a preposterous plot. That could still be fun but in this case the writing is leaden, the pacing slow, and there is very little, other than uncovering the identity of the killer, to hold the reader's attention. Halfway through the book I just stopped caring who the killer might be so I stopped reading the book.