The Good, The Bad, And The Uncanny by Simon R. Green – review

Private investigator John Taylor may be the last, best protection you’ll find that you’ll ever need–especially if you discover yourself in the Nightside. The Nightside:  A place of your wildest dreams, and your worst nightmares, of bright colorful neon lights and dark, dreadful sins. As such, it is a place teeming with some of the vilest villains you’ll ever encounter, as well as some of the strangest, but most heroic, crime fighters and Do-Gooders around. John Taylor is one of the good guys–one of Nightside’s heroes, trying to make sure that evil doesn’t have its way and escape Nightside to wreak havoc upon the rest of the Earth. In The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny, Simon R. Green’s 10th installment in his Novels of the Nightside series, Taylor does the unthinkable and joins forces with an Elf, who calls himself Lord Screech. Temporary though it may be, this teaming up comes despite Taylor knowing that one should Never trust an elf…just like no one should trust Walker, a sharp-dressed umbrella-welding agent of the Authorities who runs the Nightside, dispensing his own brand of uneven-handed justice. He tells John he’s dying, and he wants Taylor to take over his job when he’s shuffled off this mortal coil. Taylor doesn’t want the job, but Walker can be very convincing. Those who cross him generally wind up very dead. With all of the shades of gray and the darkest night that the denizens of the Nightside exhibit, not to mention its multitude of temptations, will Taylor dispel the darkness, or give in to temptation and join it?

In my opinion, this may be the best novel in Green’s Nightside series yet. I’m guessing that’s because the series will conclude with the twelfth novel, and he’s wanting to wrap it up as spectacularly as possible. I liked reading this book from the title on; I love the movie The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly directed by Sergio Leone, and I also love the clever way the author often uses puns and wordplay in his titles. It’s a very apropos title, since you’ll find all of these types of characters and more in the Nightside. The next book in the series, which I’ll be reviewing here soon, is A Hard Day’s Knight. Being a Beatles fan, I like that title even more, and I’m anxious to check it out.

Besides the cool title, though, what’s so great about The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny? The characters of Leone’s flick are morally ambiguous, with even the person representing the “Good,” Blondie (Clint Eastwood), not above seeking vengeance and trying to get a fortune buried in a cemetery before his rivals can beat him to it. The heroic characters of Green’s Nightside, like John Taylor and Ms. Fate (a bad-ass transvestite who dresses up like a 1960′s throw-back super heroine), also are morally ambiguous, motivated by a rough code of conduct, but ready to play the game as cruelly and nastily as the evil-doers if necessary. I like a bit of moral ambiguity in the good guys of movies and books, because it makes them seem more human, more nuanced, than if they were entirely good.

Often, a story’s villains end up as the most interesting characters because of their extreme, violent actions and sometimes complex motivations; but, because John Taylor isn’t above using his powers to take actions–like yank the fillings out of the teeth of a gang of thugs bent on killing him, Lord Screech, and Ms. Fate–he doesn’t end up taking a backstage to the villains. This trait, and his past history as being a son of Lilith and at one time an addicted, down-and-out denizen of the Dragon’s Mouth (an establishment that caters to your every desire, for a price) make him a very conflicted sort of hero.

Lord Screech, Taylor is sure, is almost certainly not the Elf’s real name. Also, he knows it’s dangerous to enter into any kind of deal with an Elf. But, he does, because he is intrigued by Lord Screech’s request:  “Get me to where I need to be, and I promise I’ll tell you something to your disadvantage.” Perhaps he agrees, in part, because he likes a challenge–Walker and his henchmen are bound and determined to prevent John Taylor and Lord Screech from reaching their destination, Osterman’s Gate, using any and all means possible. This includes having them attacked by almost everyone in the Dragon’s Mouth to try to stop them before they even get started, and later by a pack of werewolves, who do a lot of damage to the Fatemobile.

This is just the beginning of everything John Taylor has to face in this novel. Someone has released Queen Mab, the evil queen of the Fae, from Hell, and Taylor wants to find out who would release such a terrible foe from a place she richly deserves to be in. And Larry Oblivion, a fellow private investigator who is also a living dead man, asks for Taylor’s aid to help him locate one of his brothers, Tommy, who disappeared during rioting that broke out during the Lilith War in a previous novel in the series. Besides trying to resolve these two problems, Taylor’s “payment” by Lord Screech is the information that the sword Excalibur has shown up again somewhere in our time-line.  And let’s not forget the complication of Walker asking Taylor to be his successor.

The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny is a very entertaining, page-turning addition to Simon R. Green’s Nightside series. His complex plots, morally ambiguous heroes, and witty puns and wordplay make the publication of each novel he writes in any of his series an event that I and his fans around the world eagerly await. If you love reading Urban Fantasy novels, then you should add The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly to your reading lists today!