Dear Harry Harrison. It has been over a quarter of a century since I read anything by him. He is always good for a rip-snorting tale that goes and goes and never lets up. That is exactly what you get with The Stainless Steel Rat.
James Bolivar diGriz, known in criminal and law-enforcement circles as "Slippery Jim", is the Stainless Steel Rat - a person perfectly adapted to survive in a world made of concrete, steel and glass.
Slippery Jim is a highly adept confidence trickster, thief and master of disguise. Things have gone well for diGriz until one day when a greater criminal mastermind gives him an offer he can't refuse. His mission: to capture a still greater criminal mastermind who is threatening to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting galaxy.
Harrison has given us a utopian/dystopian vision of a far-flung future where humans have colonised the stars. The galactic community is wealthy, prosperous and peaceful, and its citizens have all their basic requirements met. On the other hand, stability is bought with a combination of chemo-psychology and a zero-tolerance approach to criminality. Aberrant people like diGriz tend to get "wiped".
The stakes are high for diGriz as he tries to outrun the law while tracking down his target. Can he win through and still maintain his identity? In posing this problem, Harrison keeps the action moving from one adrenalin-fuelled moment to the next. He lets diGriz provide the first-person narrative, and we get an insight into the intriguing mind-set of an intelligent, confident and self-justifying misfit.
All up, The Stainless Steel Rat is a solid suspense story full of thrill and spills. Well worth the time if this is your kind of thing.
I listened to the Brilliance Audio spoken-book version narrated by Phil Gigante, who did a sterling job of evoking the energy and spirit of Harrison's tale.
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