Prompted by Zelazny's recent demise, i dug into the shelf to find this one. Although he may be remembered by some for his "Amber" series, in my opinion it's a pity he couldn't have spent more time on things on things like this. (A relative pity - Zelazny was fairly prolific.)
"My Name is Legion" is fairly typical of Zelazny's qualities and some of his faults. Having zero'd his life, our nameless protagonist takes several years off to practice martial arts, lock-picking, spy "stuff" and become a fairly typical Zelazny ubermensch hero. (OK, it's silly, but just gloss over that part and accept it.) But despite his skills our hero never steamrollers over the opposition. The writing is intricate and detailed in good places (like the fight scenes) and terse and suggestive where a lesser author would have fallen on their face by trying to describe the indescribable. While the first two stories are detection heavy mysteries the final (and possibly best) story, "Home is the Hangman", is an erie confrontation which our hero must inevitably lose. This may not be extraordinary material, but it's put together in a careful, craftsmanlike way.
It strikes me that many authors have characters that are basically large children on an adventure, emotive, extravagent and single-minded. Zelazny (outside of the larger-than-life "Amber" series) wrote about adults, people who were happy and sad, solemn and ridiculous, and who had lives outside of what was written down about them. 'Tis a pity we won't be hearing any more of them. Recommended, "NYPD Blue" on the Sid and Nancy scale.
%A Roger Zelazny %B My Name is Legion %I Sphere %C New York, USA %D 1980 %G ISBN 0-7221-9421-8 %P 206pp %O paperback, Aus$9.95