Dance of the Winnebagos - Ann Charles

   2011; 366 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Book 1 (out of 6) in the “Jackrabbit Junction Humorous Mystery” series.  Genres : Romantic Mystery; Humorous Fiction; Beach Read.  Overall Rating : 6*/10.

 

    Claire Morgan is about to experience the longest month of her life.

 

    She’s agreed to stay with her grandfather, Harley “Gramps” Ford for the entire month of April.  In an RV park somewhere in Arizona, in some podunk town called Jackrabbit Junction, mostly filled with retirees.  Where gray-haired geezers get their biggest daily thrills by watching blue-haired geezerettes sashay up and down the street.

 

    33-year-old Claire would love to meet some handsome guy her age, as she’s currently unattached.  But none seem to live in Jackrabbit Junction, to no one's surprise.  Oh well, it’s only for a month and come May, she can return to North Dakota having done her familial duty.

 

    You don’t know it, Claire, but Jackrabbit Junction holds some deadly secrets, just waiting to be dug up.  And we know just the dog who will do the digging.

 

What’s To Like...

    Dance of the Winnebagos is the opening volume in Ann Charles’s 6-book “Jackrabbit Junction Humorous Mysteries” series.  The series’ title notwithstanding, I highly recommend you read this book when you’re in the mood for a Romantic Mystery tale.  More on that in a bit.

 

    The story is set in the copper-mining area of southern Arizona, with Tucson being the nearby big city.  That resonated with me, since I reside in Arizona, and once upon a time, the company I worked for supplied a number of chemical products to the copper mines.

 

    The Mystery angle starts right away.  Gramps’s beagle, Henry, digs up a bone while nosing around in an old mine, and Claire recognizes it as a human femur.  Questions arise immediately.  How old is it?  Where’s the rest of the skeleton?  Will this affect the value of the mine, which belongs to Ruby, a current Jackrabbit Junction resident, and who is contemplating selling it for some much-needed debt relief.

 

    That’s a very promising start, but it takes a back seat to the Romance angle.  Mac Garner, nephew to the mine’s owner and all-around hunk, shows up to help his aunt determine the maximum worth of her two mines.

 

    Claire and Mac meet, gets the hots for each other, and a series of misunderstandings and misadventures give rise to the Humorous angle.  If you like Hallmark Romance movies, you’ll love this plot thread; there’s even a precocious little girl that every Hallmark movie has.  Supplemental humor comes in the form of Chester and Manuel, two of Gramps’s Euchre-playing (and women-chasing) buddies.

 

    The ending is a three-phase affair.  The main mystery storyline (whose femur is it) is resolved in Chapter 24; and the Romance and Money plot threads are dealt with in the next, and final, chapter.  “Extras” in the back of the book include “About the Author”, and “Five Fun Southwestern Facts about Ann Charles”, both of which I found fascinating to read.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.3/5 based on 2,320 ratings and 717 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.95/5 based on 3,357 ratings and 473 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “Are you some kind of freak who plays with dead animals?”

    While most of Claire’s family considered her to be a few cherries short of a fruitcake, that didn’t mean she had to take any crap from this kid.  She glared at the girl.  “Who are you?”

    “I’m Ruby’s kid.”

    That explained the hair and freckles.  “You have a name?”

    “Jessica, but my friends and family call me Jess.”  She batted her eyelashes and offered Claire a want-to-be-my-friend-too smile.  (. . .)

    “Thanks for the lemonade, Jessica.”  (pg. 23)

 

    Gramps shot Claire a frown.  “What did you do now?”

    “What?  I didn’t do anything.”  Claire made a last-ditch attempt at playing the ‘I’m-innocent-I-swear’ routine.

    “Child, I wasn’t born yesterday.  When I walked up here, you two were circling each other like a pair of hungry hyenas hovering over a hunk of raw meat.”

     Claire sighed.  “Couldn’t you compare me to a prettier animal?  A cat would be nice.  Maybe even a swan.  Do swans fight?”  (pg. 191)

 

Kindle Details…

    Dance of the Winnebagos sells for $2.99 at Amazon.  The rest of the other books in the series are in the $3.99-$6.99 price range.  Ann Charles has two other e-book series: a 14-volume Deadwood Humorous Mystery (prices range from $2.99 to $7.99); and a 4-volume Deadwood Undertaker (prices range from $4.99 to $6.99).

 

If she ever saw Mac Garner again, she was going to cram her underwear down his throat until he choked on them.  (pg. 351)

    There’s a lot of cussing in Dance of the Winnebagos.  I counted 30 instances in the first 10%, which felt excessive.  Sexual innuendos abound, but to be fair, there was only one "on-screen” roll-in-the-hay, and you can guess who that involved.

 

    There were quite a few typos, including lightening/lightning, chords/cords, queue/cue, florescent/fluorescent, and pouring/poring.  Those last two occurred three times each.  Another round of editing would be beneficial.

 

    Plot twists are sparse and Claire’s sussing out of the various mystery questions was more a matter of convenient luck than skillful sleuthing.  Character development was blah: you know from the start who the good guys and baddies are, and that never changes.  The Romance and Mystery angles were both predictable.

 

    The writing style felt like it needed another round of polishing.  A plethora of literary devices were overused, including excessive similes, music references, cartoons on Claire’s t-shirts, Claire's craving of cigarettes, amorous thoughts, and the precocious little girl sassing about her mom’s poor parenting skills.

 

    So, does that mean this was a terrible book?  Not at all.  Despite the technical quibbling, Claire and Mac’s investigations into the mysteries and each other kept me turning the pages.  Dance of the Winnebagos may not be a deep taleread, but it is an ideal beach/airport read and I plan on reading at least one more entry in this series to see whether the writing and storytelling improve.   And to see what else Henry digs up.

 

    6 Stars.  One last thing.  At one point the word “snogging” finds its way into the text.  This is one of my favorite “Britishisms” of all times.  Kudos to Ann Charles for using in this story!

Just Pardon My French - Jinx Schwartz

    2016; 216 pages.  Book 8 (out of 14) in the “Hetta Coffey” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres: Women’s Fiction; Humorous Cozy; Beach Novel.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

 

    Hetta Coffey is going to France!  And since it’s a business trip, she’s traveling there on someone else’s dime. 

 

    Her job is simple – just provide security for some equipment and documents that her former employer is transferring over there.  That’s a sweet deal for her.

 

    But it gets even sweeter.  Her boyfriend, Jenks, will be meeting her when she lands in Paris, and they then will go on a several-weeks-long romantic vacation!  Maybe even travel down to the Mediterranean coast and partake of the joys of the French Riviera!  Surely nothing can spoil such an idyllic journey.

 

    Wanna bet?

 

What’s To Like...

    Just Pardon My French is my third Hetta Coffey book; the other two are reviewed here and here.  Those books were set along the Pacific coast of Mexico and the US, so France is a nice change-of-place.  Since I’m a Francophile, this was a real treat.

 

    It should come as no surprise that those French Riviera plans quickly go awry.  Jenks gets called away on business, but that allows Hetta’s friends, Jan and Po Thang, to fly over to keep her company.  The former is Hetta’s principal partner in hijinks, the latter is her lovable Golden Retriever.

 

    Hetta and company decide to rent a boat and go canal-cruising in southern France, which apparently is a popular recreation.  They make the acquaintances of a variety of fellow travelers who, besides the locals, include Hetta’s ex-lover, Jean Luc (whom she finds she still has feelings for); a single and newly-rich American girl, Rhonda; Rhonda's incredibly handsome and incredibly built boatmate, Rousel; and a pair of feathered fraternizers, Odette and Siegfried.

 

    The reader gets to learn lots of French phrases as Hetta practices her rusty French (she went to school in Paris 20 years or so ago), including a couple French cuss phrases, and some of their pejoratives for foreigners.  I also learned that the Michelin Man, that anthropomorphic guy made of stacked white tires, has a name: Bibendum.

 

        The book cover calls Just Pardon My French a mystery, but that’s a misnomer; it’s really in the Women’s Fiction genre.  Hetta and Jan spend most of their time discussing Rousel’s gold-digging designs on Rhonda, and Rhonda’s blissful blindness to his conniving.  The ending resolves those suspicions about Rousel, but in a manner that doesn't entail much excitement or plot twists.  Oh well, at least the love triangle of Jean-Luc, Jenks, and/Hetta gets cleared up.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Fulgurous (adj.) : flashing like or resembling lightning.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.6*/5, based on 1,525 ratings and 991 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.37*/5, based on 1,579 ratings and 160 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    Jan sat in front with Jean Luc, and I was just a little annoyed that she seemed drawn, like flies to a warm turd, to his charismatic personality and heart-melting French accent.  Okay, so I admit DooRah is hard not to be mesmerized by, but then, so is a cobra.  He was, unlike Jenks, who would be back soon, thank goodness, a rat capable of epic treachery.  (loc. 3645)

 

    “He was about to launch the French cherche la femme defense.  It really means that he got in trouble trying to impress me and is a convoluted way of saying if a man has a problem, there must be a woman involved.  We can thank Alexandre Dumas for coming up with that one.”

    “Men! They try to justify their bad behavior with semantics.”

    “So do we.”  (loc. 4309)

 

Kindle Details…

    Just Pardon My French sells for $3.99 at Amazon right now.  The first 12 books in the series are all priced $3.99, with the two most-recent books a dollar more.  Alternatively, you can get bundles of Books 1-5 and 6-10 for $9.99 apiece.

 

“As my grandma used to say, let’s tip over the outhouse and see what stinks.”  (loc. 2277)

    There are a couple of things to quibble about.  This is a piece of cozy fiction, but there is a small amount of cussing.  I counted 16 “hells” in the first 25% of the book, and later on there was one “SOB” and one “damned”.

 

    There are a few distracting typos, although some of them are only apparent if you’ve studied French, and include: Lemans/Le Mans; tout de suit/suite; on-lookers/onlookers; by-standers/bystanders; and Trébes/Trebés/Trebes.

 

    The bigger issue is with the storytelling itself.  As mentioned, the plotline is in need of some adventures, and there were a couple missed opportunities to infuse some excitement into things.  Hetta is guarding a shipment of sensitive information, but nobody tries to hijack it.  Jenks is called away on a top-secret security crisis, but it never impacts the main storyline.  It turns out Jean Luc does have ulterior motives for romancing Rhonda, but they're rather tame.

 

    Still, I enjoyed Just Pardon My French, even if I’m not the target audience.  There’s lots of self-deprecating, witty dialogue between Hetta and Jan, and that’s a Jinx Schwartz forte.  The storyline may not have much in the way of thrills-&-spills, but that doesn’t mean it’s boring.  And if you don't mind a bit of lighthearted Romance to be present in the books you read, you’ll love following the various pairings here.

 

    7 Stars.  Read this series when you’re in the mood for a Travelogue Tale (the descriptions of the canal cruise were great), or a Women’s Fiction story (see the Wikipedia page about this genre), not when you’re in the mood for a whodunit Mystery.  You will not be disappointed.

Call Me A Cab - Donald E. Westlake

   2022 (but written in 1977/78); 244 pages.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Humorous Fiction; Satire; Romantic Satire.  Overall Rating: 7½*/10.

 

    For New York City Checker Cab driver, Thomas Fletcher, it was a good fare.  Not only was the run from East 62^nd Street to Kennedy airport a long and lucrative one, but the woman who had just sat down in the back seat of his cab looked pleasant in his rearview mirror.

 

    She was, however, a little bit weird.  She spent much of the ride muttering to herself, and kept putting up both hands to the sides of her face, like blinkers on a horse.  A troubled soul, perhaps, or maybe even a suicidal one.  Maybe it would be prudent to make some small talk with her.

 

    Not to worry, though.  It turns out she’s on her way to Los Angeles to get married and she’s having second thoughts about the whole thing.  She’s got five hours on the NYC-to-LA flight to sort things out in her head.

 

    That isn’t enough time to make an important decision.  It calls for a change in plans.  Instead of taking her to the airport, the woman requests Thomas to take her to Los Angeles.  In his cab.

 

    I wonder how Thomas is going to calculate the cab fare for this job now.

 

What’s To Like...

    The plotline in Call Me A Cab is easily described: We ride along with the cabbie, Tom, and his fare, Katherine, on their cross-country jaunt.  The former is divorced, stuck in a mind-numbing job (and that only because his dad owns a Checker cab franchise), and pragmatic.  The latter is single and well-to-do (she’d better be, she’s paying for this coast-to-coast cab ride), with a successful career as a landscape architect, and nervously idealistic.

 

    The story is told from a first-person POV (Tom’s) and our two protagonists engage in discussions that are both insightful and witty.  Beneath the banter, though, Donald Westlake gives some enlightened views on feminism.  They might be pretty normal in today’s world, but in 1977, when Westlake was writing this book, they were cutting edge.  One example: a headwaiter who simply can’t bring himself to present the bill for a meal-for-two to the woman at the table.

 

    Needless to say, there aren’t a lot of characters to keep track of, just Tom, Katherine, and her beau that’s eagerly awaiting her arrival in Los Angeles, a successful plastic surgeon named Barry.  I thought the descriptions of the countryside the cab passes through along the way was a charming bit of Americana.

 

    Equally charming was the step back into time, with things like phone booths, smoking in restaurants, roadmaps, Stuckey’s, a towing fee of only $65, 25-cent jukeboxes, and “dry” spots in the Midwest (counties where you couldn’t buy alcohol legally).  I enjoyed meeting Boyd and Laura Chasen, and chuckled at Tom’s attempts to learn chess from Katherine.  Hey, Tom, you’re first clue that she was good at chess was the fact that she carries a “travel set” with her on trips.  Your second clue was when she announced “mate in three”.

 

    The ending is satisfying and hopeful, albeit not particularly exciting.  I wouldn’t call it “twisty” either, although I have to admit things didn’t close the way I expected.  Call Me A Cab is a standalone novel, and not part of any of Westlake’s series.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.4*/5, based on 154 ratings and 15 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.96*/5, based on 313 ratings and 64 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “It’s about getting married.”

    “Married?”  I don’t believe in marriage.  “Good luck,” I said, and some irony may have crept into my voice.

    “It isn’t right,” she said.  “I just keep turning the poor guy down.”

    “Maybe he’s the wrong guy.”

    “He’s the right guy,” she insisted.  “He’s sweet and understanding, he’s handsome and rich, he loves me and I love him— what more could I possibly want?”

    “Thursdays off?”  (loc. 151)

 

    “My car quit.  I think it’s the starter.”

    “Does it go gruh-gruh-gruh?”  The sound he made was uncannily like a car when the battery is low.

    “No,” I said.  “It goes click.”

    “Sounds like the starter,” he admitted.  “For openers, you’re gonna need a tow.”

    “For starters,” I punned.  Or tried to.  (loc. 1980)

 

Kindle Details…

    Call Me A Cab sells for $8.99 right now at Amazon.  There are dozens of Donald E. Westlake e-books available at Amazon; they range in price from $1.99 to $14.99.  If you’ve never read any Donald Westlake novels, a good place to start is anything from his Dortmunder series.

 

“Don’t laugh, this is serious.  We may have started a new religion.”  (loc. 1916)

    There’s not much cussing in Call Me A Cab.  I noted only 19 instances in the entire book, with only one of those an f-bomb.  There’s one roll-in-the-hay, but the participants are not the pair you’d think it would be.

 

    A bigger problem for most readers is what isn’t in the book.  Those who are already acquainted with Donald Westlake’s stories, such as the Dortmunder series, might be disappointed to find no crimes occur here.  And readers new to Westlake may be bored by the lack of any thrills-and-spills in the storyline.

 

    Those concerns have merit, but fortunately Donald Westlake’s storytelling skills save the day.  Call Me A Cab was a quick and easy read, and held my interest from start to finish.  It may be a bit short on the excitement, but when it comes to personal interactions and well-written drama, it shines.

 

    7½ Stars.  Call Me A Cab was written in 1977-78, but wasn’t published until 2022, 14 years after Donald Westlake passed away.  Kudos to publisher Charles Ardai at Hard Case Crime for developing this manuscript into a full-length book (it previously appeared in a shortened version in Redbook magazine) and sharing this lost gem with the public.

High Desert Barbecue - J.D. Tuccille

   2011; 264 pages.  Full Title: High Desert Barbecue: A Tale of Suspense, Pyromania and Sexual Tension.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Action & Adventure; Humorous Fiction; Arizona.  Overall Rating : 6*/10.

 

    Meet Rollo.  He’s what you’d call a loner.  That’s not quite a hermit, but pretty close to it.

 

    Rollo lives by himself in a shack way out in the mountains of northern Arizona.  It’s about a day’s hike from the small city of Williams, Arizona.  He’s not bothering anybody.

 

    Well, that’s not quite accurate.  His one mistake is that he’s living on public land.  In a National Forest, to be specific.  The Forest Service doesn’t like that.

 

    Which is why they’ve just burnt down Rollo’s shack and commandeered his truck.  Rollo just barely escaped into the woods before they grabbed him.  Now what’s he gonna do?

 

    Hey, is that a Forest Service Chevy Blazer parked just over there?  It’s a much classier truck than Rollo’s old heap.  I wonder how fast it would get him into Flagstaff, where Rollo’s friend Scott lives?

 

What’s To Like...

    High Desert Barbecue is essentially a book-long chase with the bad guys—the Forest Service rangers and some of their friends with common interests—running over the rivers and through the canyons while chasing Rollo, Scott, and Scott’s girlfriend Lani.

 

    The entire story takes place in the greater Flagstaff area, most of it in a place called Sycamore Canyon.  My college roommate was from that area and places cited in High Desert Barbecue such as Mingus Mountain, Clarkdale, and the Mogollon Rim bring back fond memories.  I’m even familiar with the tiny speck of a village called Cornville, which is part of the address of the book’s publishing house.

 

    The Forest Service team bears a close resemblance to the Keystone Kops.  Our three heroes may be outgunned, outmanned, out-communicated, and out-vehicled, but when you’ve got a living-in-the-wild geezer like Rollo on your side, you’ve got a fighting chance.

 

    Both sides are “co-ed”, which explains the subtitle’s reference to sexual tension.  J.D. Tuccille obviously has great tastes in music, since Toby Keith, The Pogues, and the J. Geils Band all get mentioned.  The Flagstaff riots made me chuckle, especially since hippies are one of the groups involved.  And the whole concept of “eco-erotica” was a hoot.

 

    The ending is a bit forced, but adequate.  The prolonged chase finally comes to an end, and the perpetrators of the pyromania are revealed to all.  Our happy but beleaguered protagonists are alive and off the hook.  High Desert Barbecue is a standalone novel and not part of any series.  There’s room for a sequel (one or more of the baddies get away), but I seriously doubt J.D. Tuccille is contemplating one.

 Things That Sound Dirty But Aren’t…

    “I have powerful lungs from all the bike-riding I do.  I can suck as long and hard as you want.”  (loc. 891)

Ratings…

    Amazon:  4.0/5 based on 29 ratings and 26 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.38/5 based on 45 ratings and 4 reviews.

Excerpts...

    “He don’t do so well in all his classes like he does in yours.”  She shrugged.  “He don’t do so well in summer school either.”

    Lani grimaced sympathetically.

    “I’m sorry about that Mrs. Begay.  I wish I could help, but there’s not much I can do about summer school.”

    Ozzie tugged at Lani’s shirt.

    “They don’t let me cut class like you do.”

    “Ummm … Let’s call it independent study, Ozzie.  Not cutting class.”  (loc. 216)

 

    Lani stood with a steaming metal cup in her hand, which she handed to Scott.  He took the cup and elaborately kissed her hand.

    “So we’re being chased through Sycamore Canyon by a pyro death cult?  How likely is that?”

    Rollo grumbled in obvious agreement.

    Scott sipped his coffee and sighed.

    “Well … it’s a lot more likely than the idea that we stumbled on a band of naked homicidal rangers holding a torch-lit forest-burning ceremony.”  (loc. 2102)

 

Kindle Details…

    High Desert Barbecue sells for $2.99 at Amazon.  It’s the only e-book offered by J.D. Tuccille, although there’s another dozen books or so under what's apparently his alternate nom de plume, Jerome Tuccille..

 

“Rollo!  I’m— Oh my God.  Did you set fire to your underwear?”  (loc. 2940)

    There are some quibbles.  From most nitpicky to least:

 

    The cussing frequency is moderate (14 instances in the first 10%), there’s a couple rolls in the hay, and a small amount of ancient marijuana, long past its expiration date, but which eventually becomes a factor in the storyline.

 

    There’s the usual number of typos and grammar errors that crop up in almost any indie author book, including things like paper weight/paperweight, on-coming/oncoming, here/her, and a place called Parsons/Parson Spring.  But they weren't frequent enough to become a distraction.

 

    The biggest problem for me was the overly convenient aspects of the storyline.  When our heroes need bigger and badass-er firepower; a cache conveniently appears.  When they’re about to be busted for shooting somebody; a distracting felony conveniently arises.  The appearance of such “deus ex machina” occurrences means that literary tension never builds as the ending approaches.

 

    And last but not least, the dog dies.

 

    6 Stars.  The main thing to keep in mind when reading High Desert Barbecue is that it’s primarily a piece of Humorous Fiction.  Are things too convenient?  Are the bad guys too unbelievably inept?  Yes and yes.  But that just contributes to the wit and comedy in the story, and in that respect I thought the book did okay.

Catchee Monkey - Sean Cameron

   2014 (so sez Amazon, although my e-book says 2021); 183 pages.  Full Title: Catchee Monkey: Two Detectives, One Murder, No Clue.  Book 1 (out of 4) in the “Rex & Eddie Mysteries” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Satire; Murder Mystery; Humorous Crime Fiction.  Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

 

    Rex and Eddie have just been fired.  Again.  This time they were working as mall cops when they got the axe.  Something about them trying to arrest legitimate shoppers.

 

    What kind of job should two former mall cops be looking for now?  More importantly, what kind of job can they get where they won’t be fired?  Well, how about becoming a two-man, self-employed Private Investigation team?  Not having a boss means no one can fire you, amiright?

 

    Fortuitously, a cheap, seedy office space in a cheap, seedy, mostly-empty strip mall has just opened up.  And Rex and Eddie have just discovered a flaw in their career plans.  Nobody is going to hire two PI’s whose combined job experience is zero.  Now where will they find their first case to investigate?

 

    Hey, how come that big ugly splotch on their office carpet looks like a bloodstain?

 

What’s To Like...

    The subtitle of Catchee Monkey—Two Detectives, One Murder, No Clue—gives a good idea of the book’s tone.  If you like duos such as Bill & Ted, Wayne & Garth, and Beavis & Butthead, you’ll enjoy this book.  Rex and Eddie schlep around town, learning how to be private investigators, running afoul of police detectives, and causing unknown bad guys to seek to do away with them.

 

    I liked the supporting characters, which include a drug-dealer with all sorts of great connections, a girlfriend who doesn’t mind dumping a beau if it means moving up in society, and a street beggar who can be counted on to lend flat broke sleuths some money.

 

    The book is written in British, not American, and I enjoyed learning new vocabulary and phrases from across the pond such as: chav, strop, hob, wheelie bin, Morris Minor, and ponce.  The name of one of Rex & Eddie’s favorite pubs, “The Jolly Codger”, made me chuckle, as did the malady “Tourette’s of the foot”.

 

    The book’s title refers to a strategy our heroes used in playing Laser Tag.  Rex and Eddie are in their 20s, and are laughed at by the teenaged Laser Tag regulars who see them as geezers.  I’ve only played Laser Tag once in my life, I was middle-aged, and I didn’t get the hang of how to maximize one’s score at all.

 

   There are a couple of great plot twists along the way to keep you on your toes.  They lead to an ending that is exciting, over-the-top, overly convenient, and with all the major plotlines tied up.  For this genre, those are all plusses.  Catchee Monkey is both a standalone story as well as the first novel in a 4-book series.  I doubt that reading the series in order is important.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  3.7/5 based on 363 ratings and 189 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.39/5 based on 376 ratings and 52 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Chav (n.) : a young person of a type characterized by brash and loutish behavior. (British slang)

Others: Hob (n.); Strop (n., British slang).

 

Excerpts...

    “This is well overdue, gentlemen.  You’re both finished.”

    “Great meeting, Chief.” Rex stood.

    “He doesn’t mean the meeting,” Eddie said.

    Rex settled back down with a puzzled expression.

    “You two are a pair of—”

    “Mavericks?” Rex said.

    “You both knocked over a fragile old lady.”

    Rex threw his hands up in the air.  “Uh, apprehended a suspect with many stolen items in her bag.”

    “She had receipts for everything.”

    “It’s a good alibi.  I’ll give her that.”  (loc. 184)

 

    “I thought you’d always wanted to do a stake-out.”

    “So did I, but this is rubbish.  I’m hungry.”

    “I told you to bring snacks.  Did you?”

    “No.  Did you?”

    Eddie pulled his lunchbox closer.  “For myself.”

    “I’m not sharing my cola then.”

    “I don’t drink cola.  It’s dehydrating.”

    Rex scrunched up his face.  “Don’t get started with that again.”

    “It’s true.  It’s science.”

    “It’s science,” Rex said in a caveman voice.  “How can liquid dehydrate you?  It’s liquid.”  (loc. 772)

 

Kindle Details…

    Catchee Monkey presently sells for $2.99 at Amazon.  Books 2 and 3 in the series go for the same price, but be aware that they are both less than 140 pages in length.  Book 4, The Third Banana, goes for $3.99 and is listed as being 314 pages long.

 

“Softly, softly, catchee monkey, remember?”  (loc. 763)

    There’s not much to complain about in Catchee Monkey.  Cussing is sparse, only five instances in the first 50% of the book, and those were mild ones: four “damns” and one “hell”.  I was impressed.

 

    There were a number of typos and grammar errors, but not to where I’d call it distracting.  The most flagrant was the repeated lack of commas when addressing someone in direct dialogue.  Others were things like head first/headfirst, smile/smiled, and my favorite: regime/regimen.

 

    That’s about it.  I suppose I could gripe about the book’s brevity – a mere 183 pages in my e-book version.  In fairness, the Amazon blurb calls this a “novella”, even though I think of novellas as being a maximum of 150 pages or so.

 

    For me, Catchee Monkey was a short, easy, delightfully entertaining read, with tons and tons of witty and funny dialogue.  Which was exactly what I was looking for.

 

    7½ Stars.  One thing to note.  Unlike the duos cited earlier in this review, at this point Rex and Eddie are not bosom buddies.  Both have traits that irritate the other, but they ignore these for the sake of solving the case and thereby earning some cash.  I thought that was kind of neat.

Slapstick - Kurt Vonnegut

   1976; 275 pages.  Alternate Title: Slapstick or Lonesome No More.  New Author? : No.  Genres: Satire; Humorous Science Fiction; Absurdist Fiction; Futurism.  Overall Rating: 7*/10.

 

    Over the course of his long life, Dr. Wilbur Rockefeller Swain, or, as he is called now, Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain, has endured many ups and downs.

 

    As a child, he was “neanderthaloid” ugly and stupid, so much so that his own mother referred to him and his twin sister Eliza as “a pair of drooling totem poles”.  Yet, when Eliza and Wilbur were in each other’s company, they connected like two specialized halves of a single brain, and produced genius intellectual concepts that would send Einstein back to the drawing board.

 

    As an adult, Wilbur became a Senator from the state of Vermont, followed by two terms as President of the United States.  The country prospered swimmingly until getting devastated by a plague called “the Green Death” combined with a sickness called “the Albanian Flu”.

 

    Now, as a 102-year-old geriatric hanging out in the lobby of the ruins of the Empire State Building, Wilbur decides to write his memoir.  His life seems to him to have been sort of like a slapstick comedy, something akin to a Laurel and Hardy routine, hence its title.

 

What’s To Like...

    Slapstick is a loosely autobiographical work by Kurt Vonnegut, with extra emphasis on his relationship with his older sister, Alice, who died in 1958, when Kurt was still a struggling writer.  I read the “Rosetta Books” e-book edition, which claimed it was 275 pages long, but it seemed much shorter than that.  The story is written from the first-person point-of-view, with 49 extremely short chapters (Wilbur’s memoir) bookended by a prologue and epilogue which are sort of an introduction and afterword from Kurt himself and kind of a “mini-memoir” of his life.

 

    While the 49 chapters do indeed provide a fictional chronicle of Wilbur’s life, the book is really just a means for Vonnegut to air his views on all sorts of his favorite subjects, including what the afterlife holds in store for us, and the feeling of “disconnect” in everyone's day-to-day life.  Indeed, someone (Amazon perhaps?) has suggested the alternate title “Lonesome No More”, which is both a sacrilege and a improvement over just plain “Slapstick”, as well as Wilbur’s campaign slogan when he runs for President.

 

    I chuckled at the role China plays in the story, especially since this was written in the 1970s.  Vonnegut portrays them as technologically superior to us: they’ve somehow transported several hundred explorers to Mars, without using a space vehicle; they know how to miniaturize humans down to where they can fit in a coat pocket, thus significantly lessening the amount of food needed to sustain the population; and probably screwed up gravity in the process, since it is now a variable, not a constant.  Some days all you can do is lay pressed to the ground during a period of high gravity.

 

    The suggested “cure” for Loneliness was fascinating.  As President, Wilbur ordains that everyone gets a new middle name (see second excerpt below for details); which instantly means you have thousands of cousins, brothers, sisters, etc. any and all of which you can contact for support, care, and affection.  Alas, even here in the story, mankind still fails to achieve a state of complete harmony.

 

    As he did in Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut comes up with a catchphrase to close out any important point he’s making.  In Slaughterhouse Five, it was “And so it goes”; here it is “Hi ho.”  Those who are allergic to cusswords will be happy to know the first 93% of the book is remarkable clean (just eight cusswords noted), but at that point we encounter someone with Tourette’s Disease, with an outburst of its requisite swearing.  Subjects like incest, spousal abuse, and erections are also discussed in brief along the way.

 

    The ending is classic Vonnegut, having surprises and twists to it while at the same time somehow being not exciting or climactic.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.2/5 based on 644 ratings and 215 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.86/5 based on 37,892 ratings and 1,649 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Panjandrum (n.) : a person who has or claims to have a great deal of authority or influence.

 

Excerpts...

    We made at least one prediction that was so deadly accurate that thinking about it even now leaves me thunderstruck.

    Listen: We began with the mystery of how ancient peoples had erected the pyramids of Egypt and Mexico, and the great heads of Easter Island, and the barbaric arches of Stonehenge, without modern sources and tools.

    We concluded there must have been days of light gravity in olden times, when people could play tiddledy-winks with huge chunks of stone.  (loc. 5237)

 

    “Your new middle name would consist of a noun, the name of a flower or fruit or vegetable or legume, or a bird or a reptile or a fish, or a mollusk, or a gem or a mineral or a chemical element—connected by a hypen (sic) to a number between one and twenty.”  I asked him what his name was at the present time.

    “Elmer Glenville Grasso,” he said.

    “Well,” I said, “you might become Elmer Uranium-3 Grasso, say.  Everybody with Uranium as part of their middle name would be your cousin.”

    “That brings me back to my first question,” he said.  “What if I get some artificial relative I absolutely can’t stand?”  (loc. 1416)

 

Kindle Details…

    Right now, Slapstick sells for $13.99 at Amazon.  There are a couple dozen of his books available in Kindle format.  They vary in price from $1.99 to $14.99, and some of his more popular works come in several editions, so compare prices.

 

“History is merely a list of surprises. (…) It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.”  (loc. 1939)

    I noted only a couple of typos (hypen/hyphen, saving/saying) in Slapstick, which no longer surprises me in anything published by Rosetta Books.  It didn't happen enough to be a distraction, and the bigger issue I had was with the plotline: there wasn’t one.

 

    Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain writes his fictional memoir (is that an oxymoron?), with lots of fascinating trivia, both real (the origin of “Robert’s Rules of Order”) and made-up (“The Church of Jesus Christ the Kidnapped”), but it never progresses into anything.  The problem isn’t Vonnegut’s writing skills, he’s a master at his craft, but the storytelling is nonexistent.  After a century of living, Wilbur is about to pass away, wiser perhaps from all the amazing things that have happened to him, but not noticeably happier.

 

    For me, Slapstick marks the start of a decline in the quality of Kurt Vonnegut's novels.  Everything before this – Player Piano, The Sirens of Titan, Mother Night, Cat’s Cradle, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, Slaughterhouse Five and Breakfast of Champions – sparkles.  Everything from here on in, at least the ones I’ve read so far – Slapstick, Galapagos, and Hocus Pocus – are ho-hum.

 

    Hi ho.

 

    7 Stars.  We’ll close with a brain teaser from the book.  At one point Wilbur is subjected to an IQ test, with one of the questions being:  How many digits are there to the left of the decimal place in the square root of 692038.42753?  Vonnegut may have been just making this up, but the geek in me just had to solve it.

 

    It took me about five minutes, with no calculator, computer, or pen-&-paper to do so.  Can you?  Answer, and the logic I used, in the Comments section.