Roger Zelazny&Alfred Bester, Psychoshop

Had a woman once with a wild idea; she wanted to leave a vacanca, a vacancy, in her heart for her lovers. I went along with it to see how it would work out.
  "But a damn black widow spier nipped in ahead of her studs and that was that. Oh, sure, every living thing, animal or vegetable, has a soul. Never again. Borgia, her name was. Lucy Borgia."

This is the book written as a posthumous duo between Bester, starting but not finishing the book before his death, and Zelazny, completing it but not seeing it published before his. Two masters of impressionistic Science Fiction, collaborating in making a very enjoyable experience.

It combines the invigorating rush of Bester running wild with the exuberance of Zelazny's talent for making the english language sing.

The setting is the Black Place of the Soul-Changer, a shop specialising in exchanging unwanted personal traits for others more desirable. The characters are Alfred Noir / Paul Jensen / Orion, journalist, investigator, enigma with a fake past and an interesting future; Glory / Medusa / Ssss shop assistant, nanny and part of what makes that future interesting and Adam Maser / Magfaser / Macavity, the Mystery Cat, Kaleideion of the Cat people, proprietor of the Psychoshop and supreme collector of abilities and concepts.

A large part of the charm of this book is the bewildering stream of customers, with their varying needs catered for in diverse and never repeating ways such as The Miniature Woman, cured by getting the ego of P.T. Barnum and numerous others I won't mention for fear of spoiling the effect.

All in all, a fun, fast read, finished far too soon.