posted on 07 Mar 2020

Authorised Murder by Isaac Asimov

I would imagine that most people associate Isaac Asimov with writing either science fact or science fiction and he was astonishingly prolific in both those genres. Fewer people will know that he also wrote a handful of detective novels and this was one of the formats where he clearly decided it was time to have some fun as an author.

Published in 1976, Authorised Murder is, to be honest, a not very good detective novel set in the world of bookselling and book writing. When I say that it’s not very good, I don’t mean that it’s not good fun to read however – in its way it’s a romp. But as a detective mystery, it’s not very mysterious and not as finely crafted in terms of plot and character development as we have come to expect from the genre in recent years. I’m hopeless at guessing who-done-it or why-did-they-do-it but I’d worked this one out well before the half-way mark. I’m also quite useless when it comes to spotting inconsistencies and holes in the continuity of detective plots but there are holes in this one that even I could fall into.

So it becomes quite quickly a book you read not to be mystified by but just to enjoy a writer having some fun of his own. Diminutive (fictional) author Darius Just is visiting the American Booksellers Association where other authors also gather to push their latest publications. Just is pretty grumpy on the whole because, as an author, he’s kind of slipped into league two and publishers and booksellers don’t really take too much notice of him any more. However, almost inadvertently, he has in the past played the role of mentor to another writer, Giles Devore, who is now the new hot thing that everyone wants a piece of. But Giles has been struck by the stardom bug and his behaviour has become increasingly irritating and unpredictable – he is threatening to leave his current publisher for a better deal elsewhere and he doesn’t want to fulfil public signing obligations.

For reasons I wont spell out here because they are pertinent to the plot (thin as it already is), Just feels responsible in some way for what turns out to be the untimely death of Devore in his hotel room. It looks at first like a simple accident in the bathroom but Just, who finds the body, has reason to believe murder is involved…..

Asimov’s desire to have some fun with the Darius Just character is most apparent when he introduces into the story one of Just’s literary friends – Isaac Asimov. This piece of meta-fictional nonsense allows Asimov to have some fun at his own expense and to establish Just as a sort of mini alter-ego.

I think the problem that I and quite a lot of other readers today may have with the book is the casual sexism that seems to be riddled throughout the narrative and becomes increasingly tiresome. While constantly professing his ‘feminist’ sympathies he parades some pretty dreadful archetypal attitudes towards women. What’s not immediately clear is whether this is the artificial and satirical construction of a character – Just is after all a rather preening bantam-cock and ‘ladies man’ – or Asimov’s own ingrained attitudes towards women. A simple Google search on the issue of Asimov and sexism brings up a number of articles that suggest Asimov had problems with ‘inappropriate touching’ and that this attitude towards women resulted in him being unable to create fully realised, non-stereotypical female characters. Non-stereotypical or fully realised female characters are not to be found here either.

All in all, there are better detective novels to be read out there unless you’re an Asimov completest – or, like me, you simply have to read anything with books at the heart of the plot.

I’m pretty sure the book is out of print in the UK but you’ll find quite cheap second hand copies on the internet should you feel moved to get one.

 

Terry Potter

March 2020