Picture of author.
8+ Works 388 Members 7 Reviews 1 Favorited

Series

Works by Keith Hartman

Associated Works

Bending the Landscape: Science Fiction (1998) — Contributor — 221 copies
Bending the landscape : Horror (2001) — Contributor — 106 copies

Tagged

Common Knowledge

Members

Reviews

This book has won a plethora of awards. "Different", barely begins to describe it...but not a "bad" different...just an interesting, enticing "different" that only causes you want to read more because you need to see what type characters are going to appear next. The book was written in 1999...I'm reading it in 2023. Not that I doubt that everyone has the ability to deduce that that is a 24-year difference...you may have forgotten that in those 24 years, a lot of the things wrote about here, have changed...yet some elements of the story seem a bit too close to the happenings of today...that is in no way a positive testament. Hartman delves into the Satanic Panic craze of the 80s and 90s that managed to produce a society that is segregated by the self-appointed religious crusaders whose mantra is “ONE Nation Under God” (the emphasis on "One" is the author’s), and everyone else is labeled blasphemers and occultists and devil worshipers. Oh...and the term "gay", for which it seems that there were even genetic tests for...is applied to random groups that I won't mention here. Schools, neighborhoods and almost everything else is regulated and segregated by religious/spiritual practices. A person that is running for the office of the presidency is willing to incite a "holy war," using his Christian Militia to achieve his goals...and of course there are some people who would not only like, but are more than willing, to take him down by whatever means. After we wade through all this, we now find that we have a missing person that has connections to the Gumshoe, the Witch...of the book title. The greater mystery, however, involves the other title character...the corpse. The exhumation and occult-style desecration of the corpse, and a subsequent series of murders with ritualistic elements that leads both the public and the police to deem them satanic in nature. All that, and now we have the question of how a fourteen-year-old boy fits into it all? The Gumshoe, the Witch who by the way...is a transgender Native American Shaman, the Police, the Senator...who is also a preacher...and a host of other characters are in on various parts of this cat-and-mouse race to find the killer, which is where the story gets more interesting. As you have probably figured out if you have plowed through this far, is that it takes every ounce of patience and perseverance to get there...but as I finished, I was glad I stuck with it until the end...otherwise, I would have always wondered. The main things I found hard to deal with had nothing to do with the author's writing abilities or the story. It was the editing...or lack of said editing... was subpar at best. Twenty-four years and NOBODY corrected it??? The second factor is that for the first quarter of the book, I really had no idea what I was reading. I actually had to go back and read the blurb. I hope the author's version of "near-future" is only in his head and has no hope of becoming yours and my reality. The entire idea is nightmare producing...especially as our society comes closer and closer to making this work of fiction, non-fiction.… (more)
½
 
Flagged
Carol420 | 2 other reviews | Jun 25, 2023 |
Keith Hartman (The Gumshoe, The Witch and The Virtual Corpse) writes compulsively readable books and this is no exception.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to grow up underground with the belief that the world above is nothing but a nuclear wasteland? Calvin, our hero, has done just that. Born shortly after the "refugees" arrived in their cavernous living quarters, at 21 years old he straddles the age line between the older generation and the kids who were born shortly after the drugs ran out. Not only does Calvin stick out as an outsider, he also questions everything, even the idea that someday in the future the little human populace would eventually return to the surface to repopulate the world.

To make things worse, Calvin's life is about to be complicated in unforeseen ways when his father is murdered. The Counsel wants the murder to be solved and the culprit captured and the obvious perpetrator is Calvin himself. Calvin's on his own in trying to figure out who the real murderer is and his search is going to lead him to an amazing discovery that will turn everything he ever knew about the world on it head.
… (more)
 
Flagged
fuzzipueo | Apr 24, 2022 |
Just how did the author keep them all straight? I bet he had a wall chart or something, with cross indexing. I'm impressed.

This book is full of interesting characters. We get first person perspectives from the Gumshoe Drew Parker, his partner, Jen late into the book, the Chosen Benji, his girlfriend Summer, her mother the Witch (whose name escapes me), the Reverend Senator Zacharia Stonewall, the Artist, the Singer, the Cherokee Shaman, the Police ... you get the picture. Each has his or her own character, distinguishable in tone and voice and you could almost read the book just by each character's part. Almost, but each story interweaves with the others in a nice flow which is surprisingly clear and easy to follow, though the mystery at the heart of the story is plenty twisty enough you don't find out exactly who did what.

To top it all off, we get criss-crossing of genre boundaries in free fall. I wish more authors would do this: there's a little bit of science fiction (it's set in the near future of 2025, artificial wombs, cloning and bio-shaping are the norm), fantasy/New Age (Wiccans who can do magic), a police procedural/detective fiction, social/religious commentary, politics, shamanism (I want to know what my totem is now) ... you name it, this book has it all, even a bit of espionage.
… (more)
 
Flagged
fuzzipueo | 2 other reviews | Apr 24, 2022 |
The Gumshoe Gorilla (or The Gumshoe, the Clone, and the Wannabe Vampires, which was the title of the edition I bought for my Kindle a couple of weeks ago), is a good follow-up to the first book in the series, The Gumshoe, the Witch, and the Virtual Corpse.

It takes place shortly after the first book, and the events of that book have consequences as well as an effect on the events of this book. (Continuity ftw!) As it turns out, not as big as effect on this story as it might have had, but it was nice to see how one thing could lead to another.

Much like Book 1, each chapter is told from a different POV. The major characters are first-person, the rest are third-person limited. And the characters in the title headings aren't called by name, but rather epithets like "The Gumshoe", "The Witch", "The Mother", and so on.

I did not see the reveal coming, but looking back it made perfect sense. And it was a nice change of pace to have a mystery that didn't involve a murder for a change. All in all, I thought this was a good book.
… (more)
 
Flagged
writersaurusrex | Feb 10, 2021 |

Lists

Awards

You May Also Like

Associated Authors

Statistics

Works
8
Also by
2
Members
388
Popularity
#62,338
Rating
3.8
Reviews
7
ISBNs
12
Favorited
1

Charts & Graphs