The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison
Pyramid, 1961
Category: Science Fiction

I’ve read a couple of the books in this series, but never the first one. Turns out there’s a lot I didn’t know about how “Slippery Jim” DiGriz and the lovely Angelina got started. The Stainless Steel Rat began life as a pair of novelettes that were reworked into the opening chapters of the book. In a universe where law and order are increasingly enforced by robots and computers, and crime has been nearly eradicated, James Bolivar “Slippery Jim” DiGriz is an anomaly, a stainless steel rat making an illegal living between the walls of society. DiGriz’s career as a con man and thief comes to a halt when he’s captured by the Special Corps and offered the chance to turn his talents to catching other criminals like himself. His first target is the mysterious and criminally insane Angelina, whose new caper is starting a revolution on a backwater planet. DiGriz has to find her and arrest her, but since she’s better than he is, it’s the biggest challenge he’s ever had.

The first sections (probably the original novelettes) are the strongest, even though they ought to be kicked into Comma Splice Hell.  You can actually see where the new material was added on by how much the grammar improves. Harrison gives us a believable con man whose heists and cons are well thought out and plausible, both in themselves and as crimes in a future universe the reader isn’t part of. Unfortunately, the bigger plot surrounding Jim DiGriz’s crimes (and Angelina’s) doesn’t hold up as well. The problem is that Angelina is just a little too insane for Harrison to redeem. She’s a multiple and unrepentant murderer who doesn’t see the value of human life and nearly succeeds in killing DiGriz himself, and the later revelation that she took to her life of crime to pay for the operations that made her face as beautiful as her mind was cunning doesn’t redeem her nearly as well as Harrison thinks. The ending is completely anticlimactic—the Special Corps swoops in, arrests Angelina, reinstates DiGriz (his joining and then leaving the Corps is another unnecessary complication), and makes everything all right again. Then DiGriz’s superior Inskipp assures him that they’ll perform a bunch of personality modifications on Angelina to cure her criminal insanity, both so they can use her as an agent and so she and DiGriz can go on to have a happy married life together. Hey presto, problem solved. Never mind the question of whether criminality really is de facto insanity; it’s too facile a solution for such a serious problem. This is not the only time Harrison stoops to manipulation to make everything turn out the way he wants, and it weakens the story tremendously. In the end, what holds it together is the characters—and I’ve already mentioned that one of them gets her personality taken away, so even that isn’t a total success.

In general, the series is a lot of fun. The later books hang together better, probably because they were created as a whole and not cobbled together from pieces. The Stainless Steel Rat was only Harry Harrison’s second published novel, and he took nearly ten years to come back to the series—that made a big difference. My recommendation is to skip this first book and go straight for the later ones. They’re fun and clever adventures, quick reads, and decent science fiction.