A fix-up in the grand old sense of the term, in that this is a re-edited merger of the two earlier published shorter stories (in 1957 and 1960), which launched the venerable 'Stainless Steel Rat' series. This is pretty good fare, but there are some grammatical errors and fudges that weaken the narrative more than they should. However, the use of a recruited ex-criminal as the anti-hero protagonist of the novel is brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. When did ambivalent heroes first come into use?
Apparently, in the far future everything has become so structured, law-abiding, and homogenised that only the hardiest of society's few remaining deviants, the toughest and most slippery, the 'stainless steel rats', can survive for long. What would happen, however, if a crook (Slippery Jim DiGriz, perhaps) were captured by the Special Corps of the galactic police, and discovered that it was staffed almost entirely by recruited former criminals?
As it turns out, what happens is that Jim jumps into the Corps, and almost immediately jumps out again, after his failed first mission and an encounter with a homicidal genius lady confidence trickster and would-be dictator called Angelina. On the run from the law, and on a quest to hunt down his lady nemesis and also unfortunate love interest, Jim goes through several ordeals before reaching the end of his current story.
There are some unusual moments in the mix here, including an unusual interlude when Jim takes a chemical cocktail in order to think like the mentally imbalanced Angelina and almost goes off the deep end. Of course, with our modern narrative savvy, we know that Jim's exile from the Special might not be as lengthy as he thinks.
Overall, 'The Stainless Steel Rat' is a pretty good read which doesn't quite sustain its length. Does it inspire continued reading through the series? Maybe, if the following volumes are easy to find. This one is almost a classic, but not quite.
O.
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