The Frost-Haired Vixen

Someone is out to scuttle the Holiday. Elves are being squashed and poisoned, and festive, peaceful guard bots are being reprogrammed as killing machines. But never fear, ace private detective Zachary Nixon Johnson is on the case, and he's going to save the "Happiest Place on the Planet." At least he will, if icy-haired beauty Santana has anything to say about it.

More futuristic detective noir fun. With HARV over his female (and gay) phases and back in Zach's head, there's not much a homicidal maniac can do to stop the indomitable duo - especially when they have Zach's fiance Electra, Captain Tony Rickey, psi-secretary Carol, and Dr. Randy Poole to back them up.

While still in the same vein as the previous three Zach Johnson novels, its plot isn't quite as delirious as what's come before. In fact, the first half of the book was so deliberate that I wondered if I was reading the first portion of a trilogy; it certainly felt more like a mystery then like a thriller. On the other hand, the wisecracks seem a little better thought out in this novel, so that's a plus.

Another installment in the "strange-haired women threaten civilisation" future detective parody series. I prefer the jointly-written preceding volumes. Some of the jokes here seemed even more forced: farther along the spectrum toward "Bob Aspirin".

This was badly edited and not inventive... felt like reading the first book over again.

Please Note: I read and reviewed this book in 2007. Just copying over the review from Amazon.

Overview: John Zakour goes it alone in this, the fourth book featuring freelance PI Zachary Nixon Johnson - the only freelance PI left in the world in the year 2060. In his latest adventure, he is approached by Santana Clausa - who runs the North Pole to make the toys for Holiday, when each person on Earth receives 3 presents. Two of the elves that she oversees have been murdered and she wants Zach to find out who did the deed.

Immediately people start trying to kill him. Just another day in the life of Zachary Nixon Johnson!

When he arrives at the Pole, he goes undercover to try to determine who among the current guests may have been the show more murderers. With guardbots being reprogrammed to attack him, sugared-up Elves all around and argumentative fellow guests to contend with, this won't be a walk in the snow.

Review: In some ways this book was superior to the joint ventures in the previous works - it is a bit more gritty and "real." In others, it needed more work - there were a lot more typos and grammatical errors, for instance. All-in-all, I would say it holds its own against the first three books in the series and I look forward to seeing where Zakour takes this most amusing cross-genre series in the future. Keep 'em coming! show less