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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hugely Enjoyable, 10 Feb 2004
I’m a devotee of hardboiled detective stories and thrillers, both psychological and suspenseful, but I also like reading humorous stories, so I was absolutely delighted to have come across this wonderful example of black humor. This is Victor Gischler’s second novel, after his successful debut Gun Monkeys, which was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best First Novel, and contains the unlikely mixture of poetry and gangland violence which are brought together in a hugely enjoyable story. It’s wildly entertaining, managing to go from laugh out loud funny to viciously violent in the blink of an eye. Writing with the kind of conversational tone that engages you as the reader, I was compelled to read longer, even when it was way, way after my bedtime.There are 2 main characters that provide the main focus to the story and initially determine what direction it will take until it all goes spinning out of control. Firstly, there’s Harold Jenks, a lieutenant to a St Louis drug lord who assumes the identity of a scholarship-winning poetry student. Jenks sees the opportunity as a way of escaping from his life of crime by stealing the name Sherman Ellis along with a bag full of his boss’s drugs. He heads for Eastern Oklahoma University and a new life of academia. Awaiting him is Jay Morgan, the poetry professor who doesn’t quite know what to make of him, but points out to his fellow professors that Ellis’ poetry is just as awful as his fellow students. As you can probably tell, Morgan doesn’t much care for amateur poetry and doesn’t teach to experience the joys of imparting knowledge. Anyway, Morgan has his mind on more important matters, not the least of which is working out what to do with the body of the dead girl in his bed. While the focus is primarily on these two characters, it’s the minor-role characters that ensured that this was one of the more memorable books that I’ve read in the last 12 months. There’s Fred Jones, an inspired yet very enigmatic character. Jones is a rich old man who has promised to donate a large sum of money to the university with the understanding that someone (Jay Morgan) agrees to help him to get his poetry published. Not surprising to us, but very surprising to Morgan, the poetry is very, very good. But it’s Jones’ other talents for which Morgan finds he has a more immediate use. Then there’s Deke Stubbs, the quintessential dirty private detective, a professor hiding out in the English department, duelling professors and a host of others who continually give a refreshing injection of the unusual to the story. This is an extremely fast-paced thriller…yeah, what the heck, I’ll call it a thriller, that starts off calmly enough but gradually builds up in intensity until it reaches a frenetic crescendo as all the sub-plots meet. The cold violence displayed in the book appealed to the hardboiled reader in me, but it was mixed with plenty of humorous moments which managed to take the wicked edge off and put a smile on my face even as the bodies piled up. After reading this, the old gun lobby catch-cry may have to change to “Guns don’t kill people – poets kill people”.
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