Subject: OF TANGIBLE GHOSTS by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

From: [email-masked] (Evelyn C Leeper)
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 1995 02:57:46 GMT

OF TANGIBLE GHOSTS by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.
             Tor, ISBN 0-312-85720-9, 1994, 381pp, $22.95
                   A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
		    Copyright 1994 Evelyn C. Leeper

     In WINGS OF DESIRE, the Peter Falk character comments on the fact
that every story seems to involve a murder mystery.  Well, that's not
quite true, but adding a murder mystery to another type of story may
attract twice the audience of either one alone, and hence is appealing
to writers of popular fiction.  And sometimes an alternate history can
be combined with a murder mystery to good effect (witness Len
Deighton's SS-GB).  But sometimes it can't, and this is an example of
that.

     The problem isn't that the alternate history is insufficient--it
does have some problems, but none that couldn't be forgiven if the
story carried it along.  The problem is rather that there is too much
in this book: an alternate history, ghosts, a murder, a fascination
with food, etc.  In this universe, the Dutch rather than the English
maintained control of eastern North America until its independence as
Columbia, and the other major powers include France, Spain, and Chung
Kuo (China).  The reason for these changes is supposedly because ghosts
exist, and so mass murders and battles were avoided because of the
problems of mass hauntings which followed.  The problem as I see it is
that this would have changed history so far back that Holland, France,
Spain, and Chung Kuo might never have existed.  (Ancient conquerors
would certainly not have killed all the male inhabitants of cities they
conquered ad then occupied the city.)  But Modesitt does a bit of
hand-waving to claim the effect was not really noticed until the Age of
Exploration.

     Modesitt also suffers from the same weakness that many alternate
history authors have: a desire to show what happened to just about
everyone who was famous in our world.  So we get Ambassador
Schikelgruber, and "aging movie stars like Anne Frances Davis [who]
could never forget her one great love, an obscure football announcer
named Dutch."

     The murder mystery is tied up with all sorts of political intrigue
which requires the reader to keep the various internal and external
politics of this universe.  But for some reason, Modesitt spends an
inordinate amount of time talking about food.  (I opened the book
fifteen times at random; seven of these times there was some mention of
specific foods being consumed.)

     There are some good ideas here, but this particular mixture just
doesn't work.  Even the alternate history aspect can't redeem this
novel, alas.

%A   Modesitt, L. E., Jr.
%T   Of Tangible Ghosts
%I   Tor
%C   New York
%D   November 1994
%G   ISBN 0-312-85720-9
%P   381pp
%O   hardcover, $22.95

--
Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | [email-masked]
There's always an easy solution to every human problem -
neat, plausible, and wrong. -- H.L. Mencken