Features
- Cover Type: Mass Market Paperback with 272 pages
- Published by: Bantam August 1, 1994
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0553568914
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0553568912
-
Book Dimensions:
6.9 x 4.2 x 0.8 inches
- Weighs: 5.3 ounces
From Publishers Weekly
Friedman's hero, an eccentric Greenwich Village musician and amateur sleuth also named Kinky Friedman, moves into action after one friend dies and another disappears. At the wake for actor and moviemaker Tom Baker, whose death is attributed to a drug overdose, Tom's dad asks Kinky to find a missing documentary on Elvis impersonators that his son had been working on. A week later, Kinky's sometime-lover Uptown Judy (as distinguished from another occasional lover, Downtown Judy) is missing from her apartment, where there is evidence suggesting that she's been taken away forcibly. In the course of his investigations, Kinky ruminates a lot over his checkered past, drinks a fair amount and expounds in great detail his peculiar, misogynistic philosophy of life. With the help of his friends (among them Kinky regulars Rambam, Ratso and McGovern), all becomes, of course, somewhat clearer in the end. But here, as in his earlier mysteries ( Musical Chairs ; A Case of Lone Star ; et al.), what matters is less the plot than Kinky himself--irreverent, mildly obscene and frequently very funny. Author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Kirkus Reviews
Nobody (certainly not sneering Sgt. Mort Cooperman) would connect the overdose of Tom Baker and the disappearance of his documentary film on Elvis impersonators with the vanishing of Judy Sepulveda from her blood-smeared apartment--if Tom and Uptown Judy (Jewish cowboy Kinky Friedman's way of distinguishing her from his conterminous lover Downtown Judy) hadn't both scribbled the Kinkster's name on their phone pads. Kinky (Musical Chairs, etc.) is sure that the Elvis film will link Tom and Judy in some less personally threatening way, but the trail to the film and its revelations will take him through some mighty dark valleys: another homicide, a TV talk-show theft, a late- night screening at that Village vanguard Fort Dicks, a suspicious fire at a snuff-film studio, the resurrection of a Mafia don, and tasteful run-ins with the usual Big Apple riffraff, who'd ``steal Jesus if he wasn't nailed down.'' Elvis and Jesus freaks alert: here's the mystery you've been waiting for. Not much about Coca-Cola, though. --
Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Reader ReviewsElvis, Jesus and Coca-Cola might possibly be the least imaginative of the plot lines in the Kinky mysteries (at least up to that point). It involves two of Kinky's lady friends, cleverly dubbed Uptown Judy and Downtown Judy, who are unaware of the other's existence until one of them is killed and the Village Irregulars pounce on the case. For fans of the series, however, the plot lines are secondary to the humorous anectodes of our hero and the everyday situations that he finds himself. Kinky's friends are all featured extensively throughout the novel, which results in a number of hilarious boozy gatherings in various bars, restaurants and a gay burlesque theatre. The infighting between Ratso, Rambam, McGovern, Brennan and Kinky's new neighbor and her two yapping dogs make up for any shortcomings in the detective yarn. I always seem to read these out of sequence, but I remember this as one of the last great entries in the series. Soon, Friedman would start resorting to new twists (including a trip to Hawaii that would make the Brady Bunch writers cringe). These books are always the best when it's Kinky and his friends drunkenly stumbling through a new case, snapping off one-liners and stories from Kinky's Texas roots and days as a country singer. Good stuff.
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