Brian Sheridan
One Too Many
- Messages
- 1,456
- Location
- Erie, PA
I am recommending a new detective series by Ellis Weiner, a humor writer.
This first book in the series is "Drop Dead, My Lovely." It is perfect for our type.
Here is the Publisher's Weekly review:
In his satiric first novel, humorist Weiner (The Joy of Worry) pokes fun at the private eye genre with mixed results. When Pete Ingalls comes to after being knocked unconscious by a pile of books in a Manhattan bookstore, he remembers only the hard-boiled detective novels he's read. He rents an office, dresses in 1940s-style clothing and hires small-time actress Stephanie Constantino to be his secretary. Mysterious, elusive Celeste Vroman asks him to find her missing married lover, attorney Jeffrey Litman. A second client, Catherine Flonger, wants Ingalls to discover if her husband, a famous TV news anchor, is seeing another woman. Blundering, naïve and inept, Ingalls nonetheless easily locates Litman, who confesses he's spurned Celeste for "class skirt" Olivia Cartwright, whose strangled body turns up in a seedy hotel room in the "prologue" that falls between chapters one and two. Mrs. Flonger makes finding her husband almost too easy. Breezy, often funny, this uneven book is rife with silly puns. When Stephanie tells Ingalls she's playing Viola in Twelfth Night, he quips, "Playing the fiddle while you're acting?" But there's some good writing, too: one character "had the pale, smooth skin of a man who went outside principally to hail cabs." Weiner clearly owes a debt to P.G. Wodehouse (a passage from The Code of the Woosters serves as an epigraph), but here he lacks the British master's sure comic touch.
This passage, early in the book, could describe many of us:
"Seriously. What's up with you?" (Stephanie)
"Come again, doll." (Pete)
"That. The way you talk. With all these 'dolls' and 'angels.' And these zoot-suity clothes. And the hat. This whole hard-boiled thing. Are you serious or what?'
"...I'm just a guy trying to stay clean in a dirty world. I'm a professional, and I wear what the professionals wear. Anybody who doesn't like it can send an e-mail to their congressman."
The second book in the series is also out: The Big Boat to Bye-Bye.
Both books are on-sale for CHEAP at Amazon.com.
This first book in the series is "Drop Dead, My Lovely." It is perfect for our type.
Here is the Publisher's Weekly review:
In his satiric first novel, humorist Weiner (The Joy of Worry) pokes fun at the private eye genre with mixed results. When Pete Ingalls comes to after being knocked unconscious by a pile of books in a Manhattan bookstore, he remembers only the hard-boiled detective novels he's read. He rents an office, dresses in 1940s-style clothing and hires small-time actress Stephanie Constantino to be his secretary. Mysterious, elusive Celeste Vroman asks him to find her missing married lover, attorney Jeffrey Litman. A second client, Catherine Flonger, wants Ingalls to discover if her husband, a famous TV news anchor, is seeing another woman. Blundering, naïve and inept, Ingalls nonetheless easily locates Litman, who confesses he's spurned Celeste for "class skirt" Olivia Cartwright, whose strangled body turns up in a seedy hotel room in the "prologue" that falls between chapters one and two. Mrs. Flonger makes finding her husband almost too easy. Breezy, often funny, this uneven book is rife with silly puns. When Stephanie tells Ingalls she's playing Viola in Twelfth Night, he quips, "Playing the fiddle while you're acting?" But there's some good writing, too: one character "had the pale, smooth skin of a man who went outside principally to hail cabs." Weiner clearly owes a debt to P.G. Wodehouse (a passage from The Code of the Woosters serves as an epigraph), but here he lacks the British master's sure comic touch.
This passage, early in the book, could describe many of us:
"Seriously. What's up with you?" (Stephanie)
"Come again, doll." (Pete)
"That. The way you talk. With all these 'dolls' and 'angels.' And these zoot-suity clothes. And the hat. This whole hard-boiled thing. Are you serious or what?'
"...I'm just a guy trying to stay clean in a dirty world. I'm a professional, and I wear what the professionals wear. Anybody who doesn't like it can send an e-mail to their congressman."
The second book in the series is also out: The Big Boat to Bye-Bye.
Both books are on-sale for CHEAP at Amazon.com.
