Edgar Ray Chandler
Ottawa movie critic Jay Stone once described the script for the movie Gladiator as if it could have been written by Shakespeare for WWF.
The Beasts of Valhalla reads as if Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury and Raymond Chandler had all teamed up to write a parody of The Lord of the Rings for a Three Stooges movie.
This is the second George C Chesbro novel I have read, the first being Shadow of a Broken Man. Being an avid fan of pulp noir from Raymond Chandler to Jim Thomson and current writers such as Ian Rankin and Deon Meyer, I found Chesbro's playful mix of the roman noir and science fiction delightful in his first novel. Several novels later, The Beasts of Valhalla ramps up the sci-fi but still keeps the wonderful cliches and comical interior monologue of the protagonist from pulp crime novels. It is also a parody of The Lord of the Rings.
The protagonist, Mongo the magnificent, is a marvelous creation as the star acrobat from the circus turned private dick with a doctorate in criminology. In Beasts of Valhalla he is also Frodo on a quest to destroy the ring. Mongo's dwarfism makes him the perfect hobbit, despite his prodigious ego and intellect.
The book is intense, mysterious and funny, though in parts the plot and dialogue became ludicrous. Larry, Moe and Curly Joe would have have reveled in this quest to save the world. I almost dreaded an anti-climactic ending, but Chesbro left me asking the same question that haunts Mongo and his brother Garth. Did they save the world or destroy the man who could have saved it?
