Review: Supermind [Malone 3] by Garrett & Janifer (1963)
Posted on February 14th, 2008
My comments on the “Malone” trilogy* can be found here in the review of the first story of the series. *Well, the novels are a trilogy, but there are three earlier novellas. Call it what you will, I won’t complain.
This novel is the payoff of the Malone trilogy. Garrett and Janifer pull out all the stops in crafting a humorous story that had me chuckle aloud for the first time in the series. The funny hits hard and fast, so you should figure out quickly whether it’s your type of story. I will give fair warning that the puns are larger-and-in-charger than ever.
This is the third and final tale of psionic FBI Agent Kenneth J. Malone. There are unfortunately no illustrations available for the Project Gutenberg release of this one, but I’m sure they follow the contradictory pattern seen in the first two stories. In this one, Malone can again teleport even though he did not learn the ability in the previous novel; he did learn it in the precious novella on which the previous novel was based. I know, it confuses me too: if you’re not following, and want the full explanation, I discuss it here in the review of the first story of the series.
This story opens with another assignment from his boss, the distracted Director Burris. Here Malone is ordered to sort out certain inefficiencies in the operations of Congress: adding machines are no longer adding correctly, secret embarrassing documents are being leaked, and the paranoids of Congress are being generally persecuted.
Malone quickly finds that the problems are widespread and affecting not just politicians, but labor unions, organized crime, and other major institutions. He also quickly realizes that there are no mundane explanations to be had, so he again enlists the help of the kindly delusional telepath that believes she is Queen Elizabeth I as well as fellow FBI Agent Thomas Boyd.
In his investigations, Malone picks up an incompetent Russian spy ring and accompanies them back to Russia when they are deported. Coincidentally, Lubya, the daughter of one of the spies is an employee at a psionic research organization Malone had encountered while digging up old stories of psionic abilities. The organization bears a striking resemblance to the Fortean Times folks, while Lubya bears a striking resemblance to a romantic interest.
The trip to Russia is madcap, and Malone is escorting not only the three spies, but Lubya and the QEI who agrees to travel incognito. The humor at the expense of the Russians was a little broad, but we are talking 1963. While there, Malone observes that the Russian spy organizations are plagued by just as many suspicious inefficiencies as he has seen in America.
Malone returns to the U.S. and plods around awhile as he normally does, lamenting his lack of deductive superpowers as compared to storybook detectives. Earlier on he had figured out that the problems were caused by some mysterious psionic cabal, and he eventually figures out who is behind it all.
The ending was vaguely unsatisfactory for me, but I do not want to ruin the potential surprise, so I’ll say no more. Even so, this one is
Highly Recommended. Beam your thoughts to your mouse to click here to read it online or teleport over to Project Gutenberg to find it in a couple downloadable formats or at Manybooks.net in more.
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