Eddy Deco's Last Caper by Gahan Wilson



Gahan Wilson is probably best known as a cartoonist, but he does write prose as well. He combined the two arts for Eddy Deco's Last Caper, an illustrated novel. Most of it is text, but nearly every page has a picture of some sort, drawn from the titular hero's perspective. In noir tradition, the prose is also first person narration.

Eddy Deco would seem to be a standard noir detective, with a past he doesn't like to think about and shabby office that has a tendency to be entered by beautiful women who want his help. But the story of Last Caper begins to take a turn for Lovecraft territory before swerving again into science fiction and even space opera. It's a very unusual novel. Both Wilson's prose and drawings are droll and entertaining.

This will probably be the last book I write about here for a while I have just dived into Neil Stephenson's Quicksilver, a massive book of dense prose. I'm about 200 pages in, and I'm guessing it will be a month before I finish it. As near as I can tell it's entirely the story of Daniel Waterhouse, a fictional character who moves in the circles of real people who invented new forms of science in the 17th century, like Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke. Stephenson has a great knack at portraying the mad spark that drives geniuses. More about this book later.

Posted: Wed - November 19, 2003 at      

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