Rating: 
Summary: Are you people nuts ?
Review: (Minor spoiler ahead, but nothing that you can't get from the dust jacket...naming no names :-) )Ok, I gotta admit. I just don't get the majority of these reviews. I am a HUGE fan of all of Spider's work...I own most of his books in their originally published form, have ALL his published work in some form or another...and this book is easily his worst effort. Yes, most of your favorite characters are there...Doc, Long Drink, Eddie, Jake, Ralph...nearly the whole gang (though a couple notable exceptions are missing, such as the Lucky Duck). But more time is spent on an inane plot revolving around Tony Donuts Jr. than on the interaction of these characters. The whole thing just reads like he threw it together in a couple days with as little thought towards the plotline as possible. As for the "sad" ending...I was probably more angry than sad. Why on EARTH would you kill off a major character -- one of the most well-developed, well-loved, and interesting in the entire series -- for no real reason, other than perhaps exercising your talent as a writer ? It was just a waste. I cannot recommend Spider's other works highly enough...not just the Calahan's series, but his work with Jeanne and everything else. But this book just is NOT worth the effort. In fact, if you love the series as much as I do, my recommendation would be to consider the series ENDED after the wonderful Calahan's Key. And Spider...if this is the best you can do in your "first effort since kicking the nicotine habit"....can I offer you a Marlboro ?
Rating: 
Summary: A Bureaucrat Finds Her Place
Review: Callahan's Con is the ninth novel in the Callahan's Saloon series, following Callahan's Key. In the previous volume, the Callahan gang saves the universe for the second time and the earth for the third. They find a good use for group telepathy and launch their own missile into space. Jake's daughter Erin demonstrates a certain virtuosity with teleportation. In this novel, it is ten years later and Jake is confronted with his own worst nightmare, a bureaucrat who can take away his daughter. Everything they try to do to placate Senior Field Inspector Czrjghbczl of the Florida Department of Education backfires; for example, she sees entirely too much of Ralph and Alf and meets Lex the Merman under inauspicious conditions. Then the gang is confronted with a behemoth of a mobster starting the old protection racket in Key West. While bumping him off would not be difficult, his absence might well raise questions. And the gang definitely doesn't want any questions raised. However, Erin demonstrates her virtuosity with time travel to con Little Nuts into buying the Fountain a Ute for the Five Old Men. This novel is so zany that it almost makes sense. Drink a little Irish Coffee whenever you begin to regain your reasoning powers and you will finish the story in high style. Although the story ends in sorrow, the Callahan gang will probably return when needed. Recommended for Robinson fans and anyone else who enjoys fun stories with a modicum of plot.
Rating: 
Summary: Spider's still got it
Review: Callahan's Con takes place ten years after the events of Callahan's Key--the moving of the bar and all its patrons to southern Florida and the subsequent naming of "The Place." Superintelligent toddler Erin Stonebender-Berkowitz is now thirteen and becomes embroiled in a conflict with the state education board due to her not attending school. She is technically being "homeschooled" (a completely useless practice due to her supreme intelligence) but Jake and Zoey have not kept up with the proper paperwork. Jake wants to wait for Erin (he doesn't speak bureaucratese) but makes things worse when bureaucrat extraordinaire Ludnyola Czrjghnczl ("accent on the rjgh") ends up in the swimming pool with resident merman, Lexington. In the meantime, a would-be-gangster comes into the bar offering "protection" for a price. Fortunately, someone recognizes him as the spitting image of his father, Tony Donuts. So the gang comes up with a plan to get him off their backs. A con involving a famous piece of Floridian history (or mythology, as the case may be). The ending involves the usual impossiblities such as time-travel and various seemingly unconquerable conflicts which are, of course, solved in the nick of time by various deus ex machinae. But this is all part of the fun. Spider Robinson is to science-fiction what Terry Pratchett is to fantasy. We just let him run with the ideas and don't ask questions. Anyone who has read previous Callahan novels will recognize the seemingly random plot progression. But it's all just a medium for the puns (the groaner the better) and love and laughter. He's not quite the heir to Douglas Adams (who possibly could be?) but you can't fault him for trying. I don't read the Callahan novels for the plots, anyway. I read them for the characters and their interactions with each other. Although you'd better stay alert reading Callahan's Con as there are a lot of those characters to keep up with. All the ones from previous books are at least mentioned and more are constantly being added to the place--wherever it is located geographically or temporally--where "shared pain is lessened, shared joy increased."
Rating:
Summary: Mediocre at best
Review: I bought this book hoping to read more about the adventures of the gang from Calahans. I almost finished this book before I realized I had read most of it before. It seems like almost a third of the book is advertisements for other Calahan's books. The story was hit or miss most of the time and several plot points seemed dropped in to mention, refer to or advertise for other Spider Robinson books. The editing on this book was a little off at times. I know that there are alot of characters to keep track of in a book like this but it gets a little strange when a character does something and 2 or 3 pages later it's credited to another character. Ex: Ludnoya tosses Jake her cell phone and one chapter later it's refered to as "Doc's phone".
I've read all of the other Calahan's books but this was the 1st one to really disappoint me. It didnt have anywhere near the amount of humor and wit of the others and the endings of the last 3 books have been almost carbon-copies of each other. There's no suspense to an ending if you know that the characters are gonna use the same "deus ex machina" to solve every crisis.
Rating:
Summary: Quality total quality
Review: I expected this one to not be all that great after Callahans Key, I thought that was the end, and it was great. I was not expecting this at all. If you are a Callahan fan then this is where it is at. Buy it, read it, you will love it.
Rating:
Summary: Quality total quality
Review: I expected this one to not be all that great after Callahans Key, I thought that was the end, and it was great. I was not expecting this at all. If you are a Callahan fan then this is where it is at. Buy it, read it, you will love it.
Rating:
Summary: Spider has done better in the past
Review: I have loved all of Spider Robinson's books about the Callahan bunch! However, this book just didn't meet the standard of his other works..
Rating:
Summary: Laughter with a Heart
Review: Jake Stonebender just can't get any peace. Having saved the universe twice and the Earth at least three times, does he now get a little break from busybody bureaucrats? Of course not - mainly because, if he did, Spider would have had no story to tell. So we open this latest segment in the Callahan saga with the entrance of the bureaucrat from hell in the person of Senior Field Inspector Czrjghbczl of the Florida Department of Education, wondering just what is being done about the education of Erin, Jake's daughter, and if her home environment is conducive to producing a fine, wholesome, upstanding lady. Of course, Jake's explanation of the situation is upstaged by his rather non-standard denizens of The Place, especially by the talking dog Ralph and the equally unusual deer Alf, and the sudden appearance of Erin herself, sans clothes - and then things really start to go downhill. One problem is never enough for a Callahan novel, so the appearance of Tony Donuts, Jr. demanding protection money is par for the course. To fully appreciate the gravity of the appearance of this persona, you need to have read Callahan's Lady, but even without that benefit, this current incarnation of the man-mountain is suitably threatening and just bright enough to foil simple solutions. The early portion of this book, where the above situations are laid out, is hilariously funny, replete with Spider's trademark groan-inducing puns, fractured syntax, tall tales, incredible characters, biting satire, and song spoofs - Spider at his best. But when he turns to how to solve these twin problems, some of the fun seems to go away. The 'con' that The Place gang of very unusual beings comes up with is far from original (how many have been scammed by being sold the whereabouts of The Fountain of Youth?), although the particular implementation of this scam has some very unique aspects. When the Donut problem is solved, Spider now invents a new problem - his wife has gone time-travelling (without appropriate spatial correction) in an attempt to find out what was going on with her daughter while operating the scam. And the only way to find her calls for, once more, (and one time too many), the gang to get together in a telepathic group bond. This seemed to me to be unnecessary padding, and the real ending to the story would have read just as well without this incident thrown in. There are multiple references throughout this book to happenings in other Callahan books, many insider jokes from the SF field, and even at one point an underhanded reference to Spider's musical recordings (he has a fine voice that should be more well-known, but such are the vagaries of the music business). All rather standard for a Callahan novel, but I did feel he may have overdone it a little in this one, possibly making it difficult for someone who hasn't read the rest of the Callahan books to completely follow and understand the relevance of these earlier happenings to the current goings-on. The ending is something of a tear-jerker, though underplayed and very quietly done, and shows the other side of Spider - emotionally sensitive, thoughtful, fully aware of not only man's foibles but his occasional grandeur, and with something important to impart to his readers. Beyond the jokes, puns, and side-splitting tales, this is what keeps me coming back to Spider, and lifts this book back up from the trough in the middle section to being not only enjoyable but worthwhile. --- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)
Rating:
Summary: The gang's all here!
Review: Others have summarized the plot of this novel quite well. I would just like to add that I found it to be the most emotionally moving of all the Callahan's installments. OK, the plot (Tony Donuts Jr.?!) wasn't as original as some of Spider's other stuff, but so what? The gang's all here (puns and all), and he brings the saga of The Place more or less up to date with a story that left me very deeply moved. I was also very pleased with the handling of of the "feud" with a certain Ukrainian family. Much more in line with the "love everyone, not just those who agree with you" philosophy espoused by many of the the characters in these books. Bravo, Spider!
Rating:
Summary: One of the best of a classic series.
Review: The last few of the books derived from the old "Callhan's" series had seemed somewhat of a letdown from the older books; not that they were bad, but I didn't enjoy them nearly as much as I had the originals. I was beginning to wonder if it was me, not them; if I had changed sufficiently as I aged from my twenties into my forties that I could no longer appreciate the kind of story I'd enjoyed then.
I'm still not sure, but this book was definitely back on a par with the older entries in the series; it was flawed (so were they, if you looked hard enough) but it was good enough to overcome its flaws. More, it was good enough to overcome one of the flaws that really bothered me about the previous entry, "Callahan's Key"; I can't say too much without giving a spoiler, but suffice it to say that I don't expect Jake and the other Callahan's regulars to be insensitive jerks; they don't prejudge people simply because they're alien cyborgs, or sentient computer networks; it seemed wrong that they would prejudge someone just because she was (A) ugly and (B) had a silly name. The fact that they did made it pretty clear that Spider was, and that bothered me; in this book, we get his apology (via Jake).
If you've tried the Callahan's books before and found them pointless and silly, your opinion of this one will be the same. If you loved them all, you'll certainly love this one. If you've felt that they'd been slipping for a while, give this one a try; you may enjoy it. If you've NEVER tried the Callahan's books before, then if you like your science fiction WEIRD, well-written and moving in spite of being silly, you will probably enjoy this book, but you might want to read some of the earlier entries in the series first.
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