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VERY IMPORTANT CORPSES by Simon R. Green

VERY IMPORTANT CORPSES

by Simon R. Green

Pub Date: March 1st, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7278-8671-2
Publisher: Severn House

Ishmael Jones, a space alien who never ages and whose secret weapon for solving problems is punching, investigates brutal, potentially supernatural attacks in an isolated Scottish manor house.

Jones works for the Organization, which is so shadowy that not even he knows its history or purpose. He’s accompanied by his girlfriend and partner, Penny Belcourt, who apparently exists only to flatter Jones and have things explained to her. The Organization has sent them to a haunted mansion on the banks of Loch Ness, where the Baphomet Group, an international cabal of 12 of the world’s wealthiest people, is having its annual meeting of unspecified racketeering and collusion (not to be confused with the Illuminati, which is obviously the crackbrained product of a laughable conspiracy theory). The Organization doesn’t care about financial manipulations but for some reason does care that one of the manipulators might have been killed and replaced with a doppelgänger. And they definitely care that the first agent they sent to investigate was killed. Jones arrives at the manor, punches a dozen bodyguards, insults the staff and the entire Baphomet Group, and only then turns to examining the body and the scene of the crime. The carnage suggests an attack by some creature, but the only possible motives are human. Jones breaks up a gun battle among the security guards with more punching, explores a secret tunnel while most of the Baphomet Group plus five prostitutes are slaughtered, and then, in the climactic battle, punches the killer to death.

Green (Dead Man Walking, 2016, etc.) presents a lightweight mystery featuring incoherent worldbuilding, pathetically childish attempts at machismo, and a glaringly obvious solution. Juvenile schlock.