Miss Shumway Waves a Wand by James Hadley Chase (Epub)

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Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ i did not receive the ecopy please send again the book as you have deducted my card with 1.29 $ IN PDF OR EPUB OR WORD DOC FORMATSno review as such as i cound not read the book at all atleast on line

⭐ A detour for JHC from his usual hard-boiled noir-ish plots- this one is an action comedy with more twists and turns than a mountain pass. Not all of them work and not all the humor hits home and yes, JHC does take some convenient ‘Get out of Jail’ cards using the supernatural elements whenever his plot heads towards a cul-de-sac. But this was one of the more enjoyable reads of my youth and is still a sentimental favorites. But as another reviewer put it, do not read this as your first JHC… do so after half a dozen classics he wrote under your belt.

⭐ This was a childish dud all the way through (despite a few laughs generated), suffused in gradeschool-level humour, and employing what should be forbidden literary devices to get out of plot difficulties.Whatever you do, do *not* read _Miss Shumway Waves a Wand_ as your first James Hadley Chase book. He wrote dozens of hard-boiled novels, but in this volume, Chase attempted to do something that he (mercifully), by all accounts, attempted in none of his earlier or later books: to cross the hard-boiled type of narration with comedy (well… okay… that’s been done before), but at the same time also with elements of a modern Mexican Western (it’s getting far-fetched now…), so that there’s quite a lot of horseback riding in the book, too… but worst of all, the book is also crammed full with puerile supernatural tricks of the shabbiest order, such as a talking dog, or the turning of an opponent into a piece of sausage (what the…?!) during an altercation, females disappearing into thin air or floating over your head and pulling your hair, and in the very worst such instance, when the leading protagonists have absolutely no way to escape from a room and are being attacked, then they… yep, you guessed it… they simply step out of the window, mid-air high above the sidewalk, a woman and a man, very much in love, and they simply tread air over the streets and buildings of New York City, escaping from danger that way. Then they safely descend onto a sidewalk and continue their adventurous pursuits in the usual manner. Well, any writer could rescue their heroes *that* way whenever they’re in a pickle.This is simply unacceptable; and it is embarrassing. If a 12-year-old child wrote a yarn like this, you might pat him or her on the head, praising the child’s imagination. But an established writer?Throughout the book, I kept hoping: this just can’t be real. The narrator simply *must* wake up right in this chapter, or the very next chapter, making it clear that most of what has occurred so far (invading the dead Indian chief’s abode could have been an acceptable turning point) was simply a dream, hallucination.No such luck here. Chase is consistent and pulls these stunts all the way through, right to the final page of the final chapter, which features a trashy, would-be funny Hollywood happy ending. He even has the guts to suggest that readers who refuse to believe such shenanigans might not be able to enjoy their lives fully. Sigh.To make it clear: I have nothing against the genre of science fiction, or fantasy. In fact, I love the classics of those genres, too. The thing is, this book caught me totally by surprise, because I never expected it to be a supernatural yarn — it’s the *last* thing I’d expect to read from a writer of Chase’s type. So it’s not the supernatural by itself that is to blame here; it’s that the book does not really work as a sci-fi or fantasy book, either; nor is it good enough as pure comedy, let alone a hard-boiled novel; it appears to be full of empty gimmicks to generate cheap laughs — and that is about it.As an example, take the leading female character. It is tiresome and inane: a female has a split personality — her “good side” and “bad side”. Not just mentally — throughout the book, the woman is able to (mostly involuntarily) split into two exactly identical female bodies (gorgeous bodies, of course), Myra and Arym, and these then counteract each other, and even verbally argue with each other, over the course of the book. And they *both* fight for the attention of the same man, the lucky narrator, whom they wish to marry! Oh, my… Though why exactly they suddenly have such fascination for him, is never explained.This is the worst type of a literary crutch: when something *verges* on being symbolic, without really getting there. Readers are left scratching their heads: “Now what the hell is *this* supposed to mean?” It must be feared that the split personality gimmick in _Miss Shumway Waves a Wand_ indicates nothing; it is a gimmick, and that is that.In _Miss Shumway Waves a Wand_, Chase abandoned what he does best — a plot-driven, gritty-realism, hard-boiled narration with a couple of delightful twists towards the very end — and tried his hand at something else. Good for him; and good for many readers — mostly hardcore Chase fans, I suspect — who seem to have enjoyed this entry in Chase’s voluminous oeuvre. I for one hope there is no other book like this left among those by Chase I haven’t read so far; if there is, I’ll do my best to avoid reading it. The one word to sum up this volume, is: kitsch.

⭐ I am writing this review simply because of the one star given by the first/other reviewer. I loved this book when I read it about 30 years ago. It is one of the funniest books I have ever read and I was in splits!I enjoyed this book as much as I did his other books which have more of thrills and chills than humor like this one.

⭐ My Father enjoyed this author and brought the book home The book went round the family a few timesit is so funny, stupid and extremely enjoyableHaving read it again many years later it is still funny, stupid and extremely enjoyable.

⭐ this is from an indian publisher; there are grammatical errors from the original

⭐ hope less book.i dont think chase can be this bad.

⭐ Lot different from other Chase’s stories.

⭐ Nice reading

⭐ The title was simply superb.

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