The Albino’s Secret (Metatemporal Detectives)
The Nazis are gaining power in Germany when Sir Seaton Begg and his friend Doctor “Taffy” Sinclair arrive in Istanbul on the Orient Express. Immediately, they are shot at as the tale gets off to a rip-roaring start. They are “Metatemporal Detectives” in this first of a series, assigned to track down the evil Red King and keep Turkey and its new reformer Mustafa Kemal on the Allies’ side in the upcoming conflict.
The long and prolific career of Michael Moorcock gives him billing as the most important British fantasy adept since Tolkien, and co-author Hodder is not far behind. The battle in the back alley, the battle in the underground tunnels, the bomb in the hotel—all the tropes are here and deftly peopled with characters we greet with recognition from previous action tales, like the enigmatic albino, the opera singer who can turn brains to mush. Details of this “metatemporal” construct are vague, so the lines between good and evil reflect the usual action novel, where Nazis always make good bad guys. Perhaps the next series installment will flesh it out more? The writing is so slick the reader is carried through with little introspection.
The descriptions of the ancient capital on the Bosphorus and life of the Roma in Romania, who will face concentration camps if these metatemporals do not act to stop it, were intriguing. Otherwise, the usual rhythm of fight/survive/fight once more threatened the numbness expressed by the doctor in the Istanbul hospital who keeps putting our heroes back together again.
