W. J. Stuart

Yes it's a smart framing device but the end left me very very angry. The solution left my first draft of a review very very sweary. Misogyny is alive and well in this story.
The result of the inquest is death by misadventure but who did it. The story has the files sent to Anthony Gethryn, the detective on leave. Only the files from the inquest and the reader is offered the chance to solve the murder mystery along with the reader. Red herrings are littered throughout but the solution, oh the show more solution, it is not worthy of the rest of the story. show less

Okay, this is pretty much what I expected for the novelization of a classic 1950s science fiction movie. Silly, clunkily written 2-D space opera. The main plot was fine; pretty similar to the film. It was a quick easy read that moved and, for the most part, made sense. I was rolling my eyes a lot at the "romance," though. Brig-bait and unicorns; that's all you need to know, really. So stupid. Very much of its time and genre. Heaven forbid women actually be real in movies and books aimed at show more teenage boys. The fragile youth, they can't handle that.

But Robby the Robot is still cool, and the monster and its origin are interesting. The book is more violent than the movie; the reader actually gets to see what the monster does, instead of having the action cut away to appalled facial expressions. show less

Although I must have seen the movie a hundred times, this is the first time I came across the book and I snapped it up on first sight. I wasn't disappointed. Like many books adapted to movies, Forbidden Planet adds details that make the story far more engaging. For one thing, the story is told from the POV of main characters, as George R. R. Martin does in the Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) series. I especially liked the portrayal of the doctor and the captain. In the book, the show more doctor is fortyish and the captain and the rest of the crew are kids to him. On the other hand, they are all old hands at space travel and he's on his first voyage. The book adds several dimensions to the story. It's a quick read, but more than worth the time. show less

A thriller rather than a mystery, by my definition, since there is no “detection” per se. In any event, catching the criminal seems to be mostly a pretext for a complicated romantic plot of extreme artificiality. But the writing is a cut above.