Date: Fri, 14 May 2004 17:10:13 -0400
From: "Michael Walsh" <MJW at press.jhu.edu>
To: <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Subject: [WSFA] Limekiller review
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

Review by Peter Heck in the September Asimov's (& yes, with his
permisssion)

mjw
________________________________________-

LIMEKILLER!
by Avram Davidson
Old Earth, $30.00 (hc)
ISBN: 1-882968-26-3
      This volume gathers together for the first time Davidson's
stories of Jack Limekiller, a Canadian expat in a semi-mythical
Central American nation called British Hidalgo. They derive in
part from Davidson's own stay in former British Honduras (now
Belize), one of the last outposts of the Empire in the New World,
but the predominant flavor of the stories is direct from the author's
own
imagination.
      Each story -- there are seven in all -- begins with
Limekiller at loose ends, on the search for work, money, or a
good time. Eventually he goes to one of the wilder parts of the
country -- up one of the rivers, to an isolated plantation, to an
offshore island -- and undergoes an experience that suggests some
supernatural force is at work. The story usually ends with
Limekiller trying to make sense of what's happened, and feeling
relieved that nothing worse went on. That's the bare bones of
almost every piece in this book.
      What happens in between -- in the numerous sections that,
according
to the book's publisher, ought to end with "But I digress," - is where
much
of the real fun is. Limekiller runs into a huge cast of amusing
characters,
ranging from pukka-sahib British colonial types to Hidalgan natives
with a
bewildering variety of accents to American tourists, all with some kind
of
story (coherent or otherwise) to tell. It's a kick just listening with

one's inner ear to the extremely mixed chorus of voices Davidson brings

into the stories. The culture of Hidalgo is very laid-back, as well --

businesses set their own eccentric hours, the bars do a thriving
business,
and the entire country seems to have drifted very slowly down the time

stream into the mid-twentieth century.
      Between Davidson's delightful dialect, his odd bits of
erudition (almost Lovecraftian, except Davidson's sources are as
likely to be his own experience as his reading) and his lively
interest in every detail of the quasi-fictional world he is
building, it almost doesn't matter that the plots of all the
stories are pretty much the same. These are rich, flavorful
stories to be savored slowly, and one at a time. If that sounds
like the kind of story you're in the mood for, =Limekiller!= is
as good as you're going to find.
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