"Robert Rankin - The Fandom of the Operator" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robert Rankin)

I'd saved up, sent away for and received the special enamel badge and everything. I had the Lazlo
Woodbine, private-eye secret codebook, the pen with the invisible ink, the unique plastic replica of Laz's
trusty Smith & Wesson (that wasnot a toy, but a collectable) and the complete set ofDeath Wears a
Turquoise Homburg* trading cards. I was saving up for theManhattanScenes of Woodbinediorama
playset, a scaled-down section ofNew York City, where you couldbe Woodbine (if you were very, very
small).

Lazlo Woodbine was the classic 1950s genre detective. He wore a trenchcoat and a fedora and worked
only in the first person. And, no matter how tricky the case might be, he only ever needed four locations
to get the job done. His office, where women-who-would-do-him-wrong came to call, a bar where he
talked a lot of old toot with his best friend, Fangio, the fat boy barman, an alleyway where he got into
sticky situations, and a rooftop, where he had his final confrontation with the bad guy. According to Laz,
no great genre detective ever needed more than these four locations. And I was saving up for the
complete set. And it all came in a cardboard foot-locker.

None of this will mean very much to anyone who hasn't read a Lazlo Woodbine thriller. But as most of
you will realize, this was special stuff, which if it was still extant and found its way into an auction room
today would command incredible prices.

I was a fan. I admit it. A big fan. Still am. I loved and still love those books. All those stylish slayings, all
the Woodbine catch-phrases. All the toot he talked in bars, the women who did him wrong, the
bottomless pits of whirling oblivion that he always fell into at the end of the second chapter when he got
bopped on the



*A Lazlo Woodbine thriller.



Remember those? No? Well, please yourself, then.



head. The whole kit and genre caboodle and the Holy Guardian Sprout inside his head.

I loved the stuff I did and do. I loved it.

Which is why I mention it here.

Iwas miffed. I'm telling you. I felt well and truly cheated. My favourite author dead and never called my
father mother. And my father had actually known him. And I never knew that he did. I could have met
the man. Had him autograph my books. Talked to him. But no. He was dead. Defunct. Gone and would
write no more.

That seemed really unfair. Really stupid. Really pointless. I felt really bad.

I mean, and give me a minute here while I get deep, I mean, what is the point of death? Does anybody
know? Being alive has a point, it has a purpose. If people weren't alive, weren't aware, then what would
be the point of the universe? It might exist, but if there was no one in it to know it existed, it might as well