Some Strange Place in the Universe

Love this review! Margaret Cannon is reviewing crime fiction for The Globe and Mail. She says she remembers “the utter delight of mysteries set in a perfectly realized alternative universe,” but apart from a story by Robert J. Sawyer, hasn’t found anything else to scratch this itch. Until now, that is, and Michael Moorcock’s The Metatemporal Detective,which is a “wonderful collection…Seaton Begg and pathologist Taffy Sinclair, of the Metatemporal Investigation Department of the British Home Office, are pure imagination at its finest.”

I knew this book would appeal to mystery aficionados, and it’s great to see how well it worked for Margaret, who I gather has never heard of Elric, whom she calls “the beastly aristo Zenith the Albino, from some strange place in the galaxy,” but who catches all the homages “to everyone from Dashiell Hammett to the nearly forgotten Sexton Blake.”

Her conclusion? “For pure fun, this alternative universe is the place to explore.”