If you've got a couple of hours to kill, there are probably worse ways than with Victor Gischler and Anthony Neil Smith's "To the Devil, My Regards." And for $.99, this is clearly a cheap thrill. But having said that, Gischler, that creative genius who's shocked and entertained with bizarre offbeat little gems like "Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse" and "Vampire a Go-Go," and contemporary crime noir with a deliciously sardonic edge - "Suicide Squeeze," "The Pistol Poets" or "Gun Monkeys" - is off his game with this one.
This is the quick tale of Z.Z. DelPresto, a smart talking slacker of a low rent private eye plying his trade along Mobile, Alabama's humid coastline. DelPresto is caught literally red-handed, holding the knife that murdered his seventeen-year old girlfriend. He's hauled in by the cops, then inexplicably released. The story bounces around as the hapless PI tries to prove his innocence, pursued by a host of would be assailants. When not absorbing punches to his head, DelPresto is conducting an unlikely investigation that includes the victim's sleep-around mother, her gay father, an inept assassin, and a sleazy dot.com millionaire who travels around with a nose-ringer hipster bodyguard. This motley cast stumbles, crosses, double-crosses, screws, shoots, murders, and dies through a series of head-scratching scenes to a conclusion that flops like a fish dying on a Gulf coast beach.
One wonders what Gischler/Smith were trying to accomplish here. The story wasn't long enough to render any characters that the reader can care about, and DelPresto, on one hand a weak version of Robert Crais' Elvis Cole, is on the other simply a despicable child predator. The dialog is forced, trying too hard to capture that Chandler/Hammet/Thompson glint, and the plot thin - not enough substance if the intent was to float "To the Devil, My Regards" as a trail balloon for a full length model - or casting DelPresto as the lead in future installments. Or maybe just the devil made Gischler do it.
In any event, not the talented Gischler's best day, but suited enough to filling some air time in a Chicago to San Francisco flight.
