Adventures
in Time and Space with Max Merriwell
by Pat Murphy
A book review by Mark L. Olson
Tor, 2001, 287 pp, $24.95
Pat Murphy's having fun, here.
Susan is a librarian who was recently laid off and recently divorced and who is on the Odyssey, a cruise ship, with her friend Pat Murphy, having won a cruise to Bermuda and England.
Max Merriwell is also on the ship. Max, you'll perhaps recall, is the credited author of There and Back Again, the marvelous retelling of The Hobbit in space, which he co-wrote with Pat Murphy. Max is an SF writer who also writes fantasy under the name Mary Maxwell, and hardboiled mysteries as Weldon Merrimax. He's been hired to teach a writing course on the cruise ship.
The cruise starts out smoothly enough, but the security department is having trouble with a man named Weldon, and Susan meets a very nice older woman named Mary on Bermuda....
It gets rapidly more complicated as a somewhat crazed fraternal organization which appeared in Mary Maxwell's book Wild Angel is onboard and people neither on the passenger list nor in the crew get murdered...and some deck chairs are torn up by a pack of wolves...
Before it's all done a flying saucer has landed on the ship and Weldon Merrimax's attempt to thrust Max Merriwell into pseudonym-ship has failed and everyone lives happily ever after.
Quite a nice little book! Recommended.
See my other reviews of Pat Murphy books: There and Back Again, Through Time and Space with Max Merriwell
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