The suggested reading order I'm using is built around the Eternal Champion omnibus editions of the mid-nineties, which explains what this single short story is doing wedged between novels. Moorcock made revisions (most of them very minor, I'm led to believe) to many of his works to bring them more firmly into the whole E.C./Multiverse uh, thing. The protagonist of this strange detective story was renamed von Bek and the story was included in the US and UK versions of the von Bek omnibus. Why this particular story? No idea, unless it's simply a matter of the setting, Berlin. Recently Moorcock revised this story yet again for inclusion in The Metatemporal Detective which, frankly, makes more sense. The narrator refers to himself as a metatemporal investigator right up front.My copy of the von Bek omnibus is, I am assured, in the mail, so I read the version from The Time Dweller.
It's hard to say anything about a fifteen page story without spoiling it somewhat. Let's see...
Things that Pleasure Garden reminded me of, mostly for quite superficial reasons:
Hitler Painted Roses - Harlan Ellison
How I Lost the Second World War and Helped Turn Back the German Invasion - Gene Wolfe
Death and the Compass - Jorge Luis Borges
The Long Goodbye (1973) - directed by Robert Altman; screenplay by Leigh Brackett
The Digging Leviathan - James P. Blaylock
The narrator on his method:
Don't ask me the location or the date. I never bother to find out things like that, they only confuse me. With me it's instinct, win or lose.
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