Review: Tinker’s Dam by Randall Garrett (1961)

Posted on February 22nd, 2008

“Joseph Tinker” is listed as the author at Project Gutenberg, but even though wikipedia does not list “Joseph Tinker” as a pseudonym, I would lay money that this novelette was actually written by Randall Garrett. Sorry for any confusion.

Joseph “Gyp” Tinker is the head of the F.B.I.’s Chief of the Division of Psychic Investigation. He’s a snake hunter issued special powers by Congress, including summary execution. Mainly he just hunts down telepaths and deports them to Oklahoma so they can’t learn sensitive Washington D.C. secrets and spill them by having their own minds read by the Russian embassy telepaths.

Gyp finds himself with a pretty secretary protecting his back from an underling looking to climb over it. Fred Plaice, the backstabber, has captured a telepath that claims to be Gyp’s mother, Maude Tinker, and is looking to ruin Gyp. If you’re wondering, that’s Maude over there, the one giving me the hairy eyeball.

Anyway, the news that Gyp’s mother is a telepath would be troublesome because telepathy is known to be hereditary, and disclosure would cost Gyp his position at the very least.

This novelette is pretty short, so I won’t give away any more. You can read it yourself to see how Gyp resolves the situation. Randall Garrett fans will not be surprised at the ending, but it is enjoyable nonetheless. Therefore I’m calling it

Good/Recommended. You can read it online here or hunt it down at Project Gutenberg in a couple formats or at Manybooks.net in more.

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