Reading Richard Rohmer

Well, I picked up Triad today, but only to refresh my memory of the first 130 pages tackled last month. For the most part, this meant going over sentences and passages that I’d underlined - thereby decreasing the value of my PaperJacks mass market edition.

First printing.

Spine badly rolled.

What I most remembered was my irritation with the beginning as Rohmer rolls back the clock – yet again. Where Periscope Red ends on May the first, the sequel begins on the tenth of March.

With seven Rohmers slain, you note this, roll your eyes, and prepare for all sorts of revisionism. But this time, the author stands by Periscope Red to its climactic conclusion:

Holy crap! A military coup! Can't wait for that sequel.

Pity the 'eighties Rohmer reader who waited twelve months, bought Triad, and waded through the first fifth to find the climactic scene reprinted and extended:

So, no coup after all. Bit of a cheat, isn’t it?

Rohmer raises questions never addressed in our university English classes: Can one novel in a series rob another of its climax? If so, what should we now consider the climax of Periscope Red?

(Please, no ribaldry about the First Lady’s “satisfied thighs”.)

Of course, we never studied Rohmer in university. His may be a unique case.

What I can say with certainty is that No More Parades is not robbed of its climax by A Man Could Stand Up and The Beasts of Tarzan in no way diminishes The Return of Tarzan.