The Hard Word: HOLLYWOOD HELL: DANA WILSON'S MAKE WITH THE BRAINS, PIERRE

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Lesa's Book Critiques: The Author’s Guide to Murder by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White

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FFB Review: The Perfect Defective: A Novella by Clark Casey

From the massive archive here at Casa Tipple and Home Eatery Library…

 

P. I. Jake Hannigan has a “…square jaw and skepticism that can’t be bought on Sundays in Blue Law States.”  (Page 5) That means he has a fondness for alcohol and will indulge that fondness whenever the mood strikes including his own office. That is where Professor Durgen found him on a certain Monday morning.

 

Professor Durgen teaches writing at a community college when he isn’t working on his novel.  Unfortunately, his novel has been stalled for over two months. He has a huge problem. He’s lost his talent, his creative juice. He’s tried drinking heavily and all that has done is made him write bad poetry. He needs his talent back as soon as possible and wants P. I. Jack Hannigan to find it for him. For twenty bucks a day and all the Johnnie Walker Blue Label he can drink, Hannigan will take the case.

 

Of course, when you are paid by all the booze you can drink, you don’t want to solve the case too fast.  It helps if you get another case you can also stall a bit. The case here that fits the bill is his next client. A sexy cheerleader wants a dead man killed.

 

The result is a fast and often laugh out loud satirical novella that has the potential to offend just about anyone. Often crude in terms of language between characters, descriptions of characters (attributes of cheerleaders being a major discussion point), and scene setting, the result is an often bluntly coarse read. It is also often funny, especially when Hannigan contacts the agent and discovers that there is a lot of truth to what disgruntled writers have claimed for years.

 

 

A twisted and perverted read that will appeal to those with a wide dark streak of humor in them, this fun book is not for everyone. It will especially appeal to writers in general and mystery fans in particular as it takes shots at all the expected conventions of the genre. It most definitely is a change of pace from the serious noir mysteries that seem to be increasingly common these days. Twisted funny and flat out warped, this 56-page read is just fun as it punches out all the detective novel stereotypes one by one while managing to slap the reader upside the head with twist after twist after twist.

 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4a0x0Qp

 

Material supplied by the author in exchange for my objective review.

 

 

Kevin R. Tipple © 2011, 2014, 2024

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Barry Ergang's New Story: The Audiophile Murder Case

The latest published read from Barry Ergang is a short story.  Originally published in 1982 in Stereophile Magazine, his short story, “The Audiophile Murder Case” is now available in digital format at Amazon and Smashwords. The tale is “a satire of the high-end audio business as a parody/pastiche of the Philo Vance mystery novels by S. S. Van Dine.” You can pick up a number of the S. S. Van Dine mystery  novels for free at the Freeditorial Publishing House website.

Book Signing

A tip of the ball cap to Barrry Ergang who sent this for the blog.

Waxahachie Daily Light: Midlothian Talk celebrity writes humor and horror

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FFB Review: POLITICALLY CORRECT BEDTIME STORIES by James Finn Garner (Reviewed by Barry Ergang)

The review below by Barry first ran on September 21, 2012. Considering the state of things these days, it seemed a good time to run it again as part of FFB. For the full list of reading suggestions, head over to Patti’s fabulous blog.

POLITICALLY CORRECT BEDTIME STORIES (1994)

by James Finn Garner

Reviewed by Barry Ergang

Paperback

“Political correctness” is one of those cultural concepts that some abhor, some wholeheartedly embrace, and some treat selectively. It’s had a profound effect on our language, but not always for its betterment. It’s caused us to rethink certain attitudes and approaches to people and situations and alter our behaviors accordingly. With both positive and negative attributes, it’s ripe for satirizing, and that’s exactly what James Finn Garner has done to it in Politically Correct Bedtime Stories. As he points out in an introduction, “When they were first written, the stories on which the following tales are based certainly served their purpose—to entrench the patriarchy, to estrange people from their own natural impulses, to demonize ‘evil’ and to ‘reward’ an ‘objective’ ‘good.’...Today, we have the opportunity—and the obligation—to rethink these ‘classic’ stories so they reflect more enlightened times.” We used to call these stories “fairy tales,” but that term, Garner says, reflects a “heterosexualist bias” and must thus be done away with.

This slim, undersized volume (it runs seventy-nine pages and measures seven-and-a-quarter by five-and-an-eighth inches) contains thirteen very short renderings of familiar stories. Without giving away too much lest I spoil the surprises, I’ll try to convey a sense of what the author has done. For instance, in “Little Red Riding Hood,” we’re told of the titular character that “One day her mother asked her to take a basket of fresh fruit and mineral water to her grandmother’s house—not because this was womyn’s work, mind you, but because the deed was generous and helped engender a feeling of community.”

The tailor in “The Emperor’s New Clothes” tells the vain monarch, “...I have brought with me a special fabric that is so rare and fine that it can be seen only by certain people—the type of people you’d want to have in your realm—people who are politically correct, morally righteous, intellectually astute, culturally tolerant, and who don’t smoke, drink, laugh at sexist jokes, watch too much television, listen to country music, or barbecue.”

 

Audio

The “economically disadvantaged” miller in “Rumpelstiltskin” “was very ashamed of his poverty, rather than angry at the economic system that had marginalized him, and was always searching for a way to get rich quick.”

In the longest story in the book “Snow White,” fleeing from the wicked queen, runs into the woods and comes upon a cottage inhabited by “seven bearded vertically challenged men” who refer to themselves as “the Seven Towering Giants.” When the queen learns where the girl is, she disguises herself as “a chronologically gifted woman,” goes to the cottage, and begs Snow White to buy an apple. “Snow White thought for a moment. In protest against agribusiness conglomerates, she had a personal rule against buying food from middlepersons. But her heart went out to the economically marginalized woman, so she said yes.”

The other stories, which in “updating” Garner turns on their heads so their endings are not usually what readers have come to expect, are “The Three Little Pigs,” “The Three Codependent Goats Gruff,” “Rapunzel,” “Cinderella,” “Goldilocks,” “Chicken Little,” “The Frog Prince,” “Jack and the Beanstalk,” and “The Pied Piper of Hamelin.”

Readers whose taste runs to satire will most likely enjoy Politically Correct Bedtime Stories. They may not want to read it at bedtime, however, lest their laughter give them a second wind and consequent insomnia. The book is available in both physical and e-book (Kindle, Nook, Smashwords) editions. There is a sequel, Once Upon a More Enlightened Time, as well as Politically Correct Holiday Stories: For an Enlightened Yuletide Season. I also just discovered that the author has put out what appears to be (so far, at least) a Kindle edition only, Tea Party Fairy Tales.

I may eventually have to look at all of them. In any case, this one is recommended. 

Barry Ergang © 2012, 2018

Some of Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s work is available at Amazon and Smashwords. The latter site is running its annual sale through the month of July. Barry and Kevin Tipple are among the participating authors, so take advantage of their reduced prices.

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FFB Review: "Bimbos Of The Death Sun" by Sharyn McCrumb-- Reviewed By Barry Ergang

Friday means Friday’s Forgotten Books. Barry kicks off things today with his review of Bimbos Of The Death Sun by Sharyn McCrumb. After you read the review make sure you check out Patti’s blog and check out other possibilities…

BIMBOS OF THE DEATH SUN (1988) by Sharyn McCrumb

Reviewed by Barry Ergang

Winner of the 1988 Edgar Award for Best Original Paperback Mystery, Bimbos of the Death Sun is anything but conventional—despite its setting being a convention. Specifically the science fiction/fantasy convention called Rubicon. Among those in attendance is Dr. James Owens Mega, professor of engineering and author (under the pseudonym Jay Omega) of Bimbos of the Death Sun, the hard science fiction novel he wrote to promulgate his “exercise in pure reason concerning the effects of sunspot activity…He had known that when Alien Books bought it, there would have to be some commercialization, but he hadn’t bargained on being heralded as the author of something called Bimbos of the Death Sun.” A first-time attendee, he is fortunate to be accompanied by his academic colleague and girlfriend Dr. Marion Farley, a professor of English who has taught courses in science fiction and fantasy; who knows the field and the fans—or fen, to use the plural in the enthusiasts’ argot—far better than he; and who knows from past experience how to navigate the alien terrain of this kind of convention.

The most prominent attendee, and the biggest draw for Rubicon fen, is author Appin Dungannon, creator of the novels starring “golden Viking warrior” Tratyn Runewind, a character as appealing as his creator is appalling: Dungannon scornful of and insulting to his avid readership. The majority of the fen are nonetheless tolerant and respectful of—often to the point of being idolatrous

—Dungannon’s behavior. This Rubicon, and any other convention, for that matter, will be the author’s last, because someone has decided to employ what Dungannon himself declares “an out-of-period weapon” and squeezes the trigger. Homicide Lieutenant Ayhan, who is frequently inclined to aver “I love this case” with increasingly frustrated  inflections, is the lead investigator, but it ultimately falls to Jay Omega, who must replace the late Appin Dungannon as Dungeon Master in a role-playing game, to solve the case.

Employing the omniscient viewpoint, Sharyn McCrumb does plenty of “head-hopping,” taking the reader into the minds of a multitude of characters in a novel that satirizes the fan mentality and the extremes to which some will go in their adoration of their favorite fictional heroes and heroines—think Trekkies, for example—as well as those who are into other kinds of sci-fi/fantasy activities: “Wargamers, Dungeon Masters, NASA freaks, comic book junkies, and other assorted fen, costumed and otherwise, sprawled in metal folding chairs facing the stage and waited for the pageantry to begin.” Some of the major characters are well-defined, but many of the lesser ones are dealt with so briefly I sometimes forgot who they and their roles in the story were.

There is also quite a bit of scene-hopping, and I suspect Ms. McCrumb resorted to this method as a structural device to give the reader a sense of the different kinds of things that might occur at this type of convention. Many of the aforementioned lesser characters appear in these scenes.

Mystery is subordinate to satire in this novel, and readers who come to Bimbos of the Death Sun wanting and expecting a traditional, formal detective story are going to be disappointed. Science fiction and fantasy readers will appreciate references to notable authors. Those who enjoy and appreciate a humorous take on a particular subculture will be rewarded with wry-toned literate prose, a lot of smiles, and possibly even a few out-loud chuckles. 

© 2015 Barry Ergang

Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s website is http://www.writetrack.yolasite.com/. You can find some of his written work at Amazon, Smashwords, and Scribd.

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