Critical Mick

Though he is but a small and curious monkey, Critical Mick has written scores and scores of unruly book reviews since 2005.

I was sitting around scratching my butt and thinking about kung-fu when Tarzan swung by, a certified letter from Stoke-on-Trent clamped between his teeth. With his loincloth and fully-developed vocal cords he thinks he's protector of this wild corner of the literary world. We all just take the monkey out of him when he's not around, poor bare-chested bastard.

I patronized him with a happy little dance, let him pat my head and mercifully soon Tarzan swung away again. His ass is antfood if he ever realizes I'm just taking pity and tries any of that "Lord of the Apes" action on me. In the meantime, he makes a good postman.

With a flick of the canines I tore the letter open. Ah, my good bud Mike Stone! He asked if I'd like to review a new short story collection which included his piece "The Devil's Fauna." Mike's written some fantastic stuff, so I fired up my web browser and replied in the critical affirmative. "Let's see if the fiction within will touch this monkey."

Twelve days later Tarzan landed on my branch with a clumsy thump. "Your package," he winced.

"Oo oo," I muttered. It was about damned time.

"Your health and freedom are the only thanks I require, little primate friend." The ponce flexed up a pose designed to impress, all upright and noble. Yeah, right. "But if you see a massive lion behaving odd, aggressive, and perhaps with something slimy trailing from its nose, would you raise the jungle to alarm? Evil stalks on new feet, O monkey."

I just got right into reading Touching the Monkey: The Best of www.tqrstories.com, didn't even "oo" Tarzan an acknowledgement. Stupid human punk had dripped his blood all over my new book.

The first author to be seen Touching the Monkey was Danny Rhodes. He shared "The Knowledge" with readers, for which they should all be damn glad. This short story took three young boys from a forbidden shed beside the railway to the seedy secret worlds ringing the dogtrack. Then seamlessly into the future, into the men they become. It was fantastic stuff. Tension and description, character and consequence! Not since the story of Adam and Eve has a book opened with such a good tale about Knowledge.

In thanks and appreciation, I mailed a banana to Canterbury. That was ages ago. Danny Rhodes must be too busy writing the follow-up novel to his debut Asboville for a thank-you note. Or maybe the Tarzan was hungry and never delivered it. Bleeding human jerk.

Three of the selections from Touching the Monkey made Mick touch new heights! Hurrah!

Would you like to touch my monkey?

The knowledge which cannot be revealed by Touching the Monkey.

"Between the Night People and the Day People" was another strong selection. It was written by John Colvin. I don't know if he likes bananas, but he does write about college kids who make doughnuts in all-night convenience stores. One convenience store, anyway. "The Zippy Mart." An interesting weirdo worked there, too, a guy names Portus who was born with four thumbs. The two extras were lopped off immediately, but Portus told Brian that he can still feel them.

It freaked his pregnant wife out when Portus touched her with them, too.

John Colvin did interesting things with late-night hours and words. How the story ends up where it does was a mystery to this monkey, but it really works.

It's the type of fiction that would go down really well on NPR. (Nihilistic Primeval Rainforest.)

As an endangered species, I generally stay away from anyplace called a "Slayground." That's the name of a story in Touching the Monkey and that's where the collection ends. Curiosity got the best of me and I paid it a visit anyway.

Paul Finch's ex-cop status stamped authenticity on his tale of an Armed Response Team in over their kevlar-helmeted heads. The story opened with conflicting radio chatter about a light plane crash-landing close to Buckingham Palace, the survivors (hijackers?) shooting London to bits. The ARV screeched to the scene, the elite police leapt out with their MP5's cocked, and what they saw between their gun sights sure wasn't Osama Bin Laden.

"Slayground." is the type of action that made me jump up and down howling "hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo." It was colorful (mostly red) and fun, with a twist in the end which made my prehensile tail proud.

As with any short story collection, not everything was to Mick's taste.

Finally I read my way though to Mike Stone's selection. "The Devil's Fauna." Sorry, Mike! I had a hard time buying it. Crows and sheep and foxes on an island off Scotland, eh? Brother, I could show you the Devil's real fauna here in my world. Welcome to the Jungle.

I flyswattered Touching the Monkey against the foot-long centipede that raced at me. Its venomous guts began to smoke and erode my branch's hardwood floor, so I swiftly wiped the book's cover on a passing drug smuggler. In historical period and character, "The Devil's Fauna" reminded me of my least-favorite tale from Stone's collection, Fourtold. The baddie in it reminded me of that Wrath of Khan flick, those slimy bug creatures that got into Chekhov's ears and made him Khan's slave-bitch. Oo oo! It was a decent read but Mike's got better stuff coming, I know. I sat there having a good old scratch, thinking about Mike Stone's future world domination. The drug smuggler's scaldy screams attracted a pack of jaguars, so it was soon quiet enough to continue reading.

I didn't enjoy the pair of funky supernatural coma travel stories in the collection. Maybe all that fermented mango juice precluded my Critical Thinking? Nah. I've got one of the best developed brains in the animal kingdom. Utterly Monkey! And I'm good looking too. The fault's not mine. It's firmly spliced onto Tarzan's vine.

That long-haired, moralizing freak really poos in my patch.

And I mean that literally.

Touching the Monkey contributor Michael Stone's debut short story collection, Fourtold was released earlier this year by Baysgarth Publications.

Another review monkeyed about, Critical Mick relaxes with Junior Editor Conor Halpin and a pint of Beamish. Note that Touching the Monkey rests up against the novel Monkey Man by Stephen Price.

Humans!

Stinking of sweat and lion guts, Tarzan's body went slack just as I finished reading the final story. All in all, Touching the Monkey proved an interesting and entertaining collection. Like all short story arrays, there were some selections that appealed to my simian id more than others, but a quality book all the same. Weird that it had no table of contents, but I judge that just makes Touching the Monkey a collector's item.

"Oo oo!" Yeah! A collector's item! I turned and booted the old hardware, brought up the Firefox and logged on to TreeBay. (That's right- a clever little monkey like me can get Linux running on anything- a 386er, a dead badger. A kapok trunk is no big hoot.) And book reviews are easy, I can rattle them out in real-time with my prehensile tail. Try that, Tarzan! With your ten fingers you can't even keep that slimy crab-looking thing trapped, to say nothing of posting hot new companion pieces that drive a book's resale value up.

Damn straight, you humans and your creepy crustacean pets could learn a few things from those code-crawlers over at Monkeewrench Software.

Your crustacean pets who like crawling their stupid spiralled body up my fur with their reddish pinchers. Hey! I can pick my own nose, thanks!

I threw the book to the jungle floor and screeched out a resounding "Oo!"