The Philosophical Strangler

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Baen Books, 2001 - Fiction - 342 pages
Mighty Greyboar, the world's greatest professional strangler, is dissatisfied with his lot in life. The work is steady and the pay is good, but what, he wonders, is the "point" of it all?

But when he learns that there is a Supreme Philosophy of Life*, Greyboar the Strangler is Born Again! Still, just how can a professional man in good standing pay the bills with all this philosophical exploration getting in the way?

That's what his hard-headed agent and manager Ignace wants to know! And Ignace's skepticism turns quickly into outright horror when Greyboar's philosophical preoccupation leads to one disaster after another ...

simple choke jobs turn into ethical quandaries... a bizarre artist and a deadly arms-master turn up to complicate their lives... as if their new girlfriends haven't complicated them enough!

Before you know it, Greyboar the strangler and his disgruntled manager find themselves embroiled with an abbess at odds with her deity, heretics on the run, dwarves needing to be rescued, and then -- the worst of all!

Greyboar's long-estranged sister Gwendolyn, political activist and revolutionary, comes back to town asking Greyboar's help in an insane mission to the underworld. it's purely a noble cause, one which no self-respecting assassin would touch for a moment. But in the pursuit of Enlightenment, anything can happen....

*What? You want the details? Hint: "Entropy." For more on the secret, buy this book!

 

Selected pages

Contents

Prologue
The Sign of the Trough
A Choking Dilemma
Sans Tout But the Beast
Portrait of a Strangler
A Delicate Affair
Thermodynamic Fortune
The Second Law At Work
The Cat in a Box
The Trios Tale
A Plot Is Hatched
A Plot Goes Awry
Justice and Injustice
Disaster Strikes
A Crazy Proposal
The Gripster in the Grotto

A Week in the Country
Downhill
Worse Than the Worst
Not Fair
The Trouble With Sisters
Remedial Theology
Great Austerities
Aesthetics and Reason
Twenty Bob on thLady
Too disgusting to title
It Gets Worse
Moments High and Low
Consolation Prize
Beyond the Evil Horizon
Into Even Worse Hands
Marvelous
Saved by the Rules
Copyright

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About the author (2001)

Eric Flint was born in southern California in 1947. He received a bachelor's degree from UCLA in 1968 and did some work toward a Ph.D. in history, with a specialization in history of southern Africa in the 18th and early 19th centuries, also at UCLA. After leaving the doctoral program over political issues, he supported himself from that time until age 50 as a laborer, machinist and labor organizer. In 1993, his short story entitled Entropy and the Strangler won first place in the Winter 1992 Writers of the Future contest. His first novel, Mother of Demons, was published in 1997 and was picked by the Science Fiction Chronicle as a best novel of the year. He became a full-time writer in 1999. He writes science fiction and fantasy works including The Philosophical Strangler and the Belisarius series.

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