Reviews of "The Sum of Its Parts"
March 18, 2025 in Goodreads.com
It begins in medias res, after the ending of the classic novel. Both author and monster are clever, leading to engaging dialogue. After the final encounter in life with Victor, the monster responds to Captain Walton's question of, “What? You killed him?”
“I suppose. He died in childbirth.”
Excellent line, summing up how the monster viewed his creator.
Richard is true to the lore of Frankenstein. Not dismissing anything established but rather expanding on it or explaining it to fit in with this book. The monster's decision to become a private detective is logical, following his conversation with the Russian whaler.
The monster, having decided to call himself "Frankenstein" as an heir of sorts to the name, advertises himself as 'Frankenstein, No Case Too Monstrous.' Richard has decided to go with the classic appearance of the monster from countless movies, rather than that of the book. No doubt because just the name "Frankenstein" conjures up a precise image, and not the literarily correct one.
Richard introduces other classic movie monsters in fairly serious fashion, but always with a sense of fun. The book uses Frankenstein's supposed connections with other famous monsters to great effect. The one thing which confuses me is Frankenstein's occasional references to the other monsters as if knowing them from a movie viewpoint, and movies didn't exist yet in his timeline. A small thing for an otherwise excellent narrative.
To say the dialogue and storylines are good would be to undersell the book. Frankenstein's (and the author's) asides to the reader alone are worth the trip. While the stories are serious, the dialogue and tone are often less so. That's something I appreciate from storylines that could have gone full-on horror easily.
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It has an open ending, leaving us the promise of future adventures with the man of many parts.
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Joel E. Roosa
Fantasy Editor, Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores
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***
March 23, 2025 in Goodreads.com
This book is tremendous fun and recommended for anyone who has always wondered what would have happened if Frankenstein’s monster had survived his final sea journey and adopted the role of private investigator in Geneva. Richard Zwicker has written a delightful series of adventures that, through all their improbability, remain somehow faithful to the original. The style is Raymond Chandler noir, the settings are shrouded in either mist, grime or darkness. Our hero meets recurring favourites from the world of monster fiction; Dracula, A Werewolf, The Invisible Man and others; either settling their grievances or bringing them some sort of closure. There is a golden thread of wisdom running through the knockabout humour and the fast-paced action. This writer knows his Shelley, but also his Melville, his Dashiell Hammett and his Mickey Spillane. Each story is self-contained, but they gain a cumulative strength. I laughed frequently and found myself being constantly delighted that what at first seemed largely entertainment was actually a good deal deeper. Zwicker is a natural storyteller and a comic writer of considerable talent.
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Posted by Simon
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5.0 out of 5 stars Monstrously entertaining read
Reviewed in the United States on Amazon on March 20, 2025
"Monster? Do we really want to go there?"—Dr. Victor Frankenstein's famous creation has a chip on his big shoulders about the monster moniker. Now he's gone legit, runs his own business as a hard-boiled detective, and keeps to the shadows while tracking down other gothic ne'er-do-wells like a batty Dracula, a not-so-tightly-wrapped Mummy, and questionable intelligence from a grumpy, humpy Igor. Fortunately the monster approaches each case with a level head and gum-shoe grit.
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Fantasy writer Rich Zwicker has performed a literary miracle by resurrecting Frankenstein’s monster for a series of novel adventures that are witty, inventive, and thoughtful. While Zwicker throws a switch on his rogues’ gallery of fleshed-out fiends pursued by the famous monster, he not only keeps his readers in stitches with a wry perspective, but also infuses his Gothic tales with big questions: the nature of justice, the limits of revenge, the burden of remorse, and what it means to be “alive.”
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“The Sum of Its Parts” is a Victorian Valentine box of weird, wonderful bon-bons, each story a distinct surprise with its own delicious center. Monster? Yes, let’s go there.
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Posted by George Chartier
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REVIEWS OF “WALDEN PLANET AND OTHER STORIES"
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“A potpourri of human and robot foibles”
Five of Five Stars
Walden Planet reminded me why I need to revise my reading choices to include more short story collections; it's an object lesson in how a collection can build stories around a range of different but related thoughts and package them in bite-sized chunks. Comparing a collection to a novel is rather like comparing a packet of crisps to a baked potato. The crisps look like a lights snack but contain more substance than you notice until after you know you're not going to stop until you've finished the whole packet.
Richard Zwicker offers up a range of flavours in his value pack of a collection, which reminded me of the works of Philip K Dick and Ray Bradbury. Like Dick and Bradbury, Zwicker uses science fiction as a vehicle to explore logic problems and the vagaries of human nature.
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Thus in the opening story, That Was So Funny I Forgot to Laugh, the tale of humans being expelled to Mars to make way for a robot utopia is really a device to explore a society that loses its capacity to respond to humour and nuance. In the final story, Dig the Slowness, the characters invent a weapon that slowly but inexorably closes in on its victim not because it would be a particularly useful weapon, but because when they can't resist fiddling with it, mortality ceases to be the abstract concept that most of us live with and forces them to face it directly.
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Every story presents themes that could spark hours of over-a-pint discussion, and does it with humour that kept me reading and a lack of judgement that left me to make up my own mind.
Posted by David Miles on Amazon, December 14, 2016
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5.0 out of 5 stars and cleverly funny. I'd read these for fun but I'd also ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 15, 2016
Verified Purchase
I'm not usually a fan of science fiction but I am a fan of this collection of stories. Each is thought provoking, engaging, and cleverly funny. I'd read these for fun but I'd also read them as serious and well-thought-out commentaries on the state of the planet. The predicted future may or may not come to pass but if it does then I'm pretty sure that men and women will interact with it in the way they do in these tales. Like all good writing it contains truth.
I'm reminded of Douglas Adams in terms of creating humour out of close observation of the timeless qualities (failings?) of human nature in contrast with the brave new world offered by time travel, slow moving bullets and other visions of where we may be heading. Many of them also show a deep knowledge of detective fiction. Echoes of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler but also some with a lighter touch. Like the Guy Noir stories that feature on Prairie Home Companion. I loved this book. Well written, great eye for detail and laugh out loud funny.
Posted on Amazon by Simon Johnson
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REVIEWS OF “THE REOPENED CASK AND OTHER STORIES"
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I really enjoyed this. Zwicker is a great storyteller and I imagine he enjoyed creating this collection of stories as much as I enjoyed reading them: which was very much indeed! They draw on wide reading from an unusual collection of genres; Greek Myths, Noir Detective of the Philip Marlowe school, Philip K Dick, Oscar Wilde, Poe, Emerson, Hawthorne, Melville, and more. The aim of the stories is to play with the source material and see what happens when it is located into a different genre or time-space and filtered through a wonderfully witty imagination. They deserve a wider audience so buy a copy and get your friends to buy one. No, better than that, buy your friends a copy each and get them to do the same.
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Posted by Simon on "Goodreads," September 10, 2020
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My quest to read more of the type of short stories I write continues with Rich Zwicker's latest collection. The cask in question is the cask that was, at least at the beginning of Edgar Allen Poe's classic story, filled only with the finest amontillado wine and sets the theme that runs through most of the stories of this collection: an extension of a classic tale. Hence Other Wishes tells that tale of a detective investigating the case of The Monkey's Paw and The Robot of Dorian Graham picks up on the themes of Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, while the reluctant detective Phokus has a couple of outings investigating some of the stranger goings on of the Greek myths and Riddle Me attempts to give a more satisfactory answer than is customary to the age-old question of why the chicken crossed the road.
All of these stories have been published in magazines and anthologies in the past, so they've been edited or passed muster with an editor before they were self-published. Most of them use the high quality of the prose to carry Zwicker's trademark wry humour and while they were easy to understand knowing the stories they were based around, the note of familiarity added a certain something when I did.
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Posted by D.J Cockburn on "Goodreads," June 26, 2018
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***
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5.0 out of 5 stars Humor, Seriousness, Skill
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Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2018
Richard Zwicker's anthology "The Reopened Cask and Other Stories" has a wide range of stories, from science fiction to fantasy, from mystery to history, and he handles each genre exceedingly well.
My favorite story in the collection is the last, "Israel Bissell Rides," which combines history taken from life somewhat after the U.S. War of Independence and impressive emotion.
It's obvious that Edgar Allen Poe is an influence, especially considering the title story, "The Reopened Cask” that is not only a continuation of Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" but also includes Poe's detective C. Auguste Dupin to investigate the murder. Poe himself features in an SF story, "Twice upon a Midnight Dreary," which also includes literary stars Hawthrone and Melville. All three are androids, and among other literary androids, their task is to read, in a small park, their works. The tension, as well as the mood, increases when there is a crime to prevent. The androids weren't designed for detective work. Does that stop them? Of course not. It's a fun story, as are the others, written in seriousness or in humor, whether the loneliness of a deep-space mission or ripping apart the Greek pantheon. Zwicker covers all bases, and I highly recommend this anthology.
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Posted by Chet Gottfried on Amazon, July 7, 2018