I hate Dan Simmons. Here’s why:
He and I (and thousands of other would-be, wanna-be, will-be writers) entered a short story contest back in 1982, sponsored by The Twilight Zone Magazine. One of the rules of the contest was that the entrant cannot have been professionally published before. That put Mr. Simmons and I (and all those others) figuratively at Square One. Fair enough.
Dan Simmons took 1st place with a story entitled “The River Styx Runs Upstream”, while I received a Dear Contest Entrant rejection for my tale “The Stranger in the Street”. Okay, well…that’s fair enough, too. His was a hell of a story, while mine was pretty much lark vomit.
Skip forward to this minute. Dan Simmons has published 13 novels, as well as countless novellas, short stories, essays, and introductions to various fiction collections. He has won the World Fantasy Award (SONG OF KALI), the Hugo (HYPERION), the Bram Stoker (CARRION COMFORT, PRAYERS TO BROKEN STONES, “This Year’s Class Picture”). He has attempted, and subsequently mastered, science fiction, fantasy, horror, thriller, and mainstream fiction. He has gone from tapping keys in Square One to kicking back with brandy and cigars at the Millionaire Estates.
Meanwhile, I have gone from that very same Square One to…well, relatively speaking, I guess I’m still starting out. While I’ve seen publication a number of times (even professionally), I am certainly no Dan Simmons.
Sour grapes?
Nah. Because, truth to tell, I don’t hate the guy. I don’t even know him. I do, however, know his work fairly well and I don’t think it’s overstating matters to say that Dan Simmons is one of the most talented, versatile, flat-out amazing authors on this planet.
Really.
And now to the review at hand:
It’s rare that I get so involved in a novel that I actually want to climb inside it and participate in the events, speak with the characters, eat with them, drink with them. THE CROOK FACTORY is one such book (THE THROAT, by Peter Straub is another).
Imagine sitting down at Ernest Hemingway’s dinner table and conversing with Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman, and a number of other guests some of whom are undercover espionage agents (both good and bad). Imagine knocking back a beer with “Papa” at one of his favorite Cuban watering holes, discussing the state of affairs in a world caught up in war. Dan Simmons imagined these things, and a lot more. Thanks to his expert prose, you, the reader, can smell the food, hear the laughter, feel the tension. You sense the character’s emotions almost as if they were your own. You grasp the depth and weight of Hemingway’s words about life, love, and writing. Most importantly, you forget you’re reading fiction…which leads to the most amazing thing about THE CROOK FACTORY:
Most of it isn’t. Fiction, that is.
In the spring of 1942, “Papa” Hemingway actually pieced together a “counterespionage ring” consisting of veterans of the Spanish Civil War, waiters, bartenders, prostitutes, a priest, and various drinking buddies. He often climbed aboard (along with some of the above-mentioned “agents”) his fishing boat, the Pilar, and set out into the rich blue waters off Cuba (where he had a home in pre-Castro days) to hunt for German submarines. His intent was to sink one using hand grenades and other small ordnance items.
Really-really.
What Dan Simmons has done in THE CROOK FACTORY is take a series of actual, though jaw-dropping events, meld them with intriguing, coalescing bits of invention, and produced a remarkable work for which the word “novel” just doesn’t seem adequate. The final chapter brought tears to my eyes, and that, I’ll admit, is rare as well.
THE CROOK FACTORY is more than mere entertainment, more than just a spy thriller. It is an engrossing study of mankind at its warring worst…and its creative best.
“Papa” would have loved it.
Recommended:
