The James Boys

When his train is attacked by bandits, celebrated novelist Henry James discovers that Wilky and Rob, his younger brothers presumed killed in the Civil War, are now Frank and Jesse James. Richard Liebmann-Smith asks this tantalizing question: What if Henry and his brother, noted psychologist William, were also brothers of the infamous outlaws, Frank and Jesse? Liebmann-Smith creates a world in which this is both possible and plausible, inventing credible biographies and ingeniously intermingling researched facts with plot details. While Malcolm Hillgartner's narration is intelligent, it's too subdued to capture Liebmann-Smith's droll humor. Hillgartner handles the prim stuffiness of Henry and the pragmatism of William, but his interpretations of the characters' snappy asides and sardonic wit are less successful. Even so, THE JAMES BOYS is worth a listen. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

April 28, 2008
Former Basic Books editor Liebmann-Smith, who cocreated Comedy Central's The Tick
, takes “what's in a name?” to amusing extremes in his debut novel. Novelist Henry James and Harvard psychologist William James really did have two younger brothers, neither of whom amounted to much. That situation changes drastically in Liebmann-Smith's goofball historical conceit, part The Bostonians
and part Blazing Saddles
. In 1876, Henry James travels by train on a New York Tribune
–commissioned journalistic tour. When the train is suddenly ambushed by a group of bandits led by Frank and Jesse James, the latter exclaims, on encountering the novelist: “Holy shit.... It's Harry!” The jokes and historical squiblets go off like six-guns in the 200-plus pages that follow, with Frank and Jesse James starring as the wayward brethren of the illustrious New England Jameses (which, in real life, they most certainly were not). Liebmann-Smith includes enough plot, to keep this single-joke, creatively imagined biography chugging along.