Triangles
Triangles: Reveiw by Jeff Stookey
In the initial novella, Triangles, three couples end up on a sail boat headed out to scatter the ashes of the overbearing family patriarch. At first I thought this was going to be a mystery “who-done-it” like Death on the Nile, everyone claustrophobically confined to a large yacht. But it turns into a suspense story where the reader is on the edge of her seat waiting to see who is going to do something horrifying and when are they going to do it.
Semprebon is good at creating that suspense. And he knows how to crank up the tension. He engineers intricate overlapping secrets and betrayals, both past and present, that drive the strains and antagonisms between the various family members and their spouses. His characters are believable and consistent, as is his dialogue.
The author has a masterly touch at double hearings/seeings. He accurately depicts how people do not hear each other, or hear what they want to hear, or what they believe. As he jumps from one character’s point of view to another, we see clearly the ways they fail to understand each other’s words and actions. Is the closeness of two bodies an attack or a seduction or something else? Nefarious or innocent?
After setting up these extreme conflicts, he follows the logic of the dramatic situation with deadly precision to its unrelenting and horrendous conclusion.
As he says in his introduction, “Read at your own risk.”
The following two short stories share the same tensions, the same kinds of misunderstandings, and the same vivid characters. “Grave Incident” again focuses on family tensions and the death of a disreputable father. “Q d’Etat” is overtly political and depicts another example of dangerous human misunderstandings. And it gives a bleeding-heart liberal like me a window into the mindset of the MAGA, Q-Anon mindset. For that alone, this story should be read by a wide audience.
Proven results that speak for themselves.
Vixen Outlaws
review by Greg Donley
Set in Portland, Oregon in 1880, Rolf Semprebon’s Vixen Outlaws is a pulpy tale combining historical details about the region with a fictional plot that recasts the 1965 Russ Meyer movie Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! in the frontier West. Snappy and often funny dialogue keeps things moving along briskly and there’s plenty of sex and violence, in keeping with the inspiration. Semprebon playfully tosses in nods to exploitation flicks and low-budget Westerns along the way.
As in the movie, three go-go dancers (or the Wild West precursors thereof) encounter a couple from the “better” side of town. A tussle ensues for no particular reason and the group’s ringleader Varla ends up killing the man. They drug and kidnap the woman (Linda in the movie, whose Oregon frontier name amusingly becomes Lindy Sue in this book) and skip town. Also as in the movie, they hear about a large amount of money said to be in the possession of a man in a wheelchair, and of course Varla hatches a plan to go rob him.
From those shared core elements, Vixen Outlaws departs from the movie and takes on its own character, as the action readjusts to horseback and the characters tap the mix of European, native, and Asian cultures present in Oregon at the time. A close but enigmatic relationship evolves between Varla and Lindy Sue. Ruthless bounty hunters show up as well, also looking for the fabled cash.
Semprebon paints even villain/vixen Varla as a multidimensional person with a real history, and the character of Lindy Sue develops substantially throughout until the end when she is truly a changed person. Her return to Portland feels less like a conclusion than a new beginning. It’s fun and pulpy, with evocative settings and satirical undercurrents. The intriguing characters (those who survive) grow more interesting throughout, leaving the reader curious to learn what might happen to them after the final page of this book.
Fortunately, Vixen Outlaws is said to be the first part of a trilogy set in and around Portland in the 1880s.
