The same bizarre mixture of ingredients that has turned Kinky Friedman from a country musician into a popular mystery writer and hero of his own series continues in this exercise oddity, which, true to form, seems to contain something to offend virtually everyone. "If you spend a little time with lesbians and nuns, you begin to see the effect love or the absence of it can have on a human life," muses the Kinkster at one point. This comes after a campaign by Friedman to terrorize his upstairs neighbor, Winnie Katz, whose lesbian dance classes have caused the ceiling of his Greenwich Village loft to collapse. But Kinky's amateur terrorism pales by comparison to the mysterious person who wants to do some real damage to Winnie, so Friedman and his Village Irregulars turn from aggressors to protectors. Surrounded by Italian gangsters with names like Linguini and Gepetto, they plan a weird revenge scheme that involves such horrors as chainsaws and Friedman in a red wig.

The title--usually the best thing about a Kinkster book--has to do with which particular member of his motley crew will be officially chosen to play Watson to his Sherlock. But even here there are no clear answers: as Friedman says, "President Clinton is Watson. The Chinese dwarf who paints pastels on Mott Street is Watson. The world is Watson. Only Sherlock Holmes stands achingly alone on the weather-beaten, worm-eaten cross of rational thought. Sherlock Holmes, you see, is the thinking man's Jesus Christ."

--Dick Adler

From Publishers Weekly
Frenetic amateur PI Kinky Friedman is up to his old tricks in this campy mixture of bawdy surrealism and Tom Sawyerish pranks. Kinky's sleuthing duties have taken a decidedly sluggish turn when the roof literally comes crashing in. His upstairs neighbor, Winnie Katz, a lesbian dance instructor, has been stomping through dance routines with her students for weeks on end and all the pounding has taken its toll on Kinky's crumbling ceiling. Kinky calls in an old favor from a mob-connected friend, and suddenly finds two oafish Italian workmen at his door promising to repair the ceiling as a favor to Joey the Hyena. The Hyena is indebted to Kinky for saving his daughter from a mugger, but Kinky learns from the workmen that Joey's daughter died three years before Kinky saved her. Annoyed that his Manhattan loft is virtually under siege and by the twist in the story of the daughter, Kinky decides to divert himself by writing death threats to Winnie. In an impulsive move, Kinky takes the prank one step further by offering Winnie the services of his good friends, aka "The Village Irregulars," to ferret out the source of the threats. The five "Watsons" are no sooner ensnared in Kinky's humorous web of deceit than a real stalker appears on the scene, threatening to kill Winnie for real. All's well that ends well in this slim mystery, but the ultimate moment of truth falls flat. Hardy fans of the indomitable Friedman won't be disappointed, however, with this rollicking followup to Blast from the Past. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
A bunch of PI Kinky Friedman hangers-on are vying for the role of official sidekick, so the Kinkster suggests that they try to figure out who sent his upstairs neighbor a death threat. He doesn't realize until too late just how serious this death threat really is. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Since he already shares so many of the hallmarks of that other Sherlock Holmesdrug use, sexual confusion, and his own Village Irregularswhy shouldn't Kinky Friedman, the Sherlock of Vandam Street, have his own Dr. Watson? And what better occasion to audition potential Watsons from among the Irregulars than the death threats someone's scribbled to Winnie Katz, the man-hating lesbian dancer instructor upstairs? So p.i. Steve Rambam bugs Winnie's apartment to get more info; reporter McGovern and photographer Mick Brennan pretend to be with the Times of London to interview her; upstairs neighbor Stephanie Dupont goes undercover as a new dance student; so does Ratso Sloman, disguising himself as Barney Frank supporter Roscoe Figbiter to take Winnie's friends out for pizza. What none of the Watsonabes knows is that the threatening note was written by the Kinkster himself, smashed, stoned, and furious at the plaster the constant twinkle-toes above have shaken loose from his ceiling and sent falling on his head. But if the whole cockeyed caravan is based on nothing more than Kinky's prank, why is somebody in a Fred Flintstone mask breaking into Winnie's apartment to threaten her for real? And can Kinky rouse himself from his reveries of legendary professional gas-passer Le Petomaine (18571945) and lopsided conversations with his cat to solve the mystery? Out of all Kinky's dozen cases (Blast from the Past, 1998, etc.), this is the first one in which the plot doesn't interrupt the flow of laugh-out-loud jokes, because the whole plot is one big joke. Solid gold for fans, and the only Kinky adventure non-fans will ever need. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review
Joseph Heller Another big hit from Kinky Friedman. As good as his best!

Los Angeles Times The Kinkster is a catcher, not in the rye, but in the sagebrush, and that's what is truly appealing about him and his work.

Kirkus Reviews Solid gold for fans, and the only Kinky adventure nonfans will ever need.

Review
The Sun (Baltimore) Italian, Irish, Gentile, Jew, hetero, or gay, there's something to offend nearly everybody, if the laughter didn't get in the way.

Review
Kirkus Reviews Solid gold for fans, and the only Kinky adventure nonfans will ever need.

Book Description
How many lesbians can dance on the head of a pin? Kinky Friedman sure as hell doesn't know, but he's learning exactly how many it takes to send the geriatric plaster tumbling from the ceiling of his downtown New York loft. The culprit is one Winnie Katz, man-hating proprietress of a lesbian dance troupe that thunders daily through his waking dreams. And when Winnie won't even give it enough of a rest to let Kinky patch the hole, our hero, lost in a blue-gray haze of Irish whiskey and cigar smoke, takes drastic action. He pens an anonymous, threatening note, hoping -- as only one lost in an alcohol-soaked fantasy can hope -- to then step in as "Ace Private Big Dick" Friedman, and save the day, thus earning the undying gratitude of Ms. Winnie. Besides, just as Sherlock Holmes had his Watson, the Kinkster needs a suitable sidekick, and what better test? He calls on each of his Village Irregulars to solve the case: reporter Mike McGovern; Dylan look-alike Ratso Sloman; investigator Steve Rambam; and his own lady love, the delicious Stephanie Dupont. But things get dicey when the bogus death threat turns all too real, and suddenly Kinky and his Keystone crime fighters find themselves dancing -- none too daintily -- for their lives.

About the Author
Kinky Friedman lives in a little green trailer in a little green valley deep in the heart of Texas. There are about fifty million imaginary horses in the valley, and quite often they gallop around Kinky's trailer, encircling the author in a terrible, ever-tightening carousel of death. Even as the hooves are pounding around him in the darkest nights, one can hear, almost in counterpoint, the frail, consumptive, ascetic novelist tip-tip-tapping away on the last typewriter in Texas. In such fashion he has turned out twelve novels, including Blast from the Past, Roadkill, The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover, God Bless John Wayne, Armadillos & Old Lace, and Elvis, Jesus & Coca Cola. A pet armadillo called Dilly, a small black dog named Mr. Magoo, and two cats -- Dr. Scat and Lady Argyle -- can sometimes be found sleeping with Kinky in his narrow, monastic, Father Damien-like bed. Visit Kinky Friedman on the World Wide Web at www.kinkyfriedman.com and www.utopiarescue.com. To order the Kinkster's new live CD, Classic Snatches from Europe with Little Jewford, call (713) 521-7700, or visit www.sphincterrecords.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1 It was Monday morning, and the cat and I were staring sulkily upward into the moon-sized crater in the ceiling of my loft. Indubitably, it had been the result of the constant pounding on the floor above by Winnie Katz and her lesbian dance class. The previous morning, after attending services at the Church of St. Mattress, I'd finally gotten Rambam on the blower and he'd promised to call Joe the Hyena to round up several handpicked members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Rambam also promised that he and the workmen would show up this morning at eight o'clock sharp. It was now ten-fifteen and there was no one in the loft but me and the cat. "It's a shame what's happened to the glorious tradition of unions in this country," I said to the cat. "We've gone from legendary leaders like Joe Hill to modern-day mob leaders like Joe the Hyena. Of course, without Joe the Hyena we wouldn't be currently receiving the help we're currently not receiving. What would Woody Guthrie or Tom Joad have to say about all this? At least we can thank the Baby Jesus that lesbians don't have unions. We'd never get this damn ceiling paid for." The cat absorbed my comments in a state of stoic silence. The cat was a Republican and had never cared a flea about the problems of the working man or woman in America. I, on the other paw, had a great deal of sympathy for the plight of the working person. It couldn't be said that I had a great deal of empathy, however, seeing as I'd never worked a day in my fife unless, of course, you wanted to count my two years in the Peace Corps, where I labored rather fruitlessly in the jungle teaching people who'd been farming successfully for over two thousand years how to improve their agricultural methods. The only things that came out of all the time and effort I expended there were a large harvest of tedium, a tattoo, a handful of friends I'll probably never see again, two blowpipes gathering cobwebs on the wall, and an occasional late-night craving for monkey brains. Some would say that's pretty good for eleven cents an hour. "Monkey brains" I said to the cat, as I drew my second cup of espresso, "are considered quite a delicacy by the Punan tribe of Borneo" The cat wrinkled her nose slightly in a moue of distaste. She followed this patrician behavior with a barely audible mew of distaste. Like many cats, and many Republicans, she was extremely ethnocentric. Her attitude toward the Punan tribe of Borneo might be effectively summed up as: "Let them eat monkey brains" Just to irritate the cat, I stayed on the subject a little longer than was probably necessary. I lit a cigar and, with a certain professorial detachment, watched the fragrant blue smoke billow upward into what used to be my ceiling. Then I continued, undeterred, with my anthropology lecture, which I could tell was starting to make the cat want to climb a wall. If the truth be known, it wasn't all that exciting from my side of the lectern either, but if you're waiting for Rambam and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers you've got to pass the time somehow or you'll inevitably become highly agitato, then you'll snap your wig, then you'll hang yourself from the nearest passing shower rod, then you won't ever have any problems with your ceiling again because your floor will be the sky. "The Punan tribe of Borneo are nomadic pygmies" I continued, "who by this time have no doubt been displaced by some totally unnecessary government dam or have ceased to exist entirely because some Japanese lumber conglomerate has cut down all the trees. No trees, no monkeys, no brains, no Punans. The only anthropological relics of their existence, indeed, may be these two blowpipes one sees exhibited upon this wall." As I turned to direct the cat's gaze to the wall in question I observed a rather curious scenario. There were not only no trees, no monkeys, no brains, and no Punans. There was also no longer any cat. Fighting down a mild panic, I had just begun to start searching for the cat when a noise that sounded like a foghorn from a large ship at sea drifted ominously into the loft. I walked over to the kitchen window and shoveled a glimpse four stories down at Vandam Street. It was pretty foggy out there and I couldn't see the ship. No trees, no monkeys, no brains, no Punans, no cat, no ship, no ceiling. Have a nice day. The foghorn sounded again, and this time I flung open the window to the arctic void that was New York City in February and noticed a rather nondescript van parked on the sidewalk somewhere in the middle of a necklace of garbage trucks. The van began spitting out several little stick men and one of them appeared to be beseeching me from the street. "Throw down that fuckin' puppet head!" shouted Rambam. "I'm freezin' my ass off down here!" I wandered over to the refrigerator and plucked from the top of it the last cheerful face in the city. The face belonged to a little wooden puppet head, and nobody knew where the puppet itself was now. Very possibly its strings were currently being pulled by a crippled ballet dancer on the seventh ring of Saturn. But as far as the head was concerned, it was still smiling, even with the key to the building wedged firmly in its mouth and a brightly colored parachute attached from the place where its neck would've met its body. I threw the little head out the window and watched it float gracefully down into Rambam's rapacious hands. 'Men I closed the window before my own neck froze off my body and somebody tied a brightly colored parachute to my scrotum. "Come out, come out, wherever you are" I chanted loudly, or I'll puff on your whiskers with my big cigar." The cat and I did not enjoy a particularly healthy or mature relationship, and certainly the cat did not come out from wherever the hell she was. In a state of high exasperation I gazed up at the ceiling, and that brought me back to the situation at hand. This was hardly the time for a game of cat and mouse. Winnie Katz and her lesbian dance class had done severe damage to the ceiling of the loft and, to add insult to injury, Winnie had refused to take any responsibility or to help pay for the necessary work required to fix it. "One man's floor is another man's ceiling," I'd told her rationally over the blower. "It's one person's floor, cowboy," she'd said. "And there's nothing wrong with my floor. Your ceiling is structurally weak." "Right:' I'd said. "And how many lesbians do you think can dance on the head of a pin?" "I wonder how many can dance on top of your pinhead?" she'd said, and hung up the blower. No doubt, I'd sort out the cat and the lesbian situation later, I figured. I could hear Rambam and the workmen coming up the stairs, and with any luck they'd be on the job soon. The ceiling did look structurally weak, actually, and besides, staring at that yawning chasm was beginning to give me an empty feeling. Like I'd been living on this planet for fifty-three years and all I had to show for it was a hole in the ceiling. "Joe sends his best:' said Rambam, walking in the door with the puppet head in his hand. "He also sends Vinnie and Gepetto." "Jesus Christ!" said Vinnie, as I started to introduce myself. "Who the hell lives up there? A fucking elephant trainer?" "A lesbian dance class," I said. "Dat explains it," said Vinnie. "What time is it?" "Ten-thirty," I said. "But it's no problem. We've got all day -- " "All day?" said Vinnie. "You gotta be kiddin' Dis could take all week' "Sorry we're late, by the way," said Gepetto. "We had to stop by da fish market to -- uh -- take care of a little business dis morning Shit, man, dis looks like a big job. Could cost a bundle' "Joe told me he'd give Kinky the Israeli Discount," said Rambam. "I know," said Gepetto, "but he didn't know da hole in da ceiling was big enough to hide Jimmy Hoffa' "I'll talk to Joe again" said Rambam. "Right now I've got to run. I've got to pick up a delivery of sock puppets at the airport. You guys might as well get started, and I'll check back later. In the meantime, ask Kinky if there's anything you need' "Hey, Kinky," said Vinnie, as Rambam started down the stairs, "dere is one thing we might need" "What is it, Vinnie?" I said. "Mustard" said Vinnie. "It's lunchtime." Copyright © 1999 by Kinky Friedman

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
The premise is nice and easy. As is the book.

Since Kinky is vaguely, sort of, kind of, maybe a little bit like Sherlock Holmes, shouldn't he have a Watson to assist him? But which of his cronies deserves the job? Kinky decides to pull a trick on them. Fake a note that threatens the life of Winnie Katz, the dance instructor who thunders through her days and nights on the floor above Kinky. Whichever one of his pals can best show off his deductive skills gets the Watson gig. But then somebody really does try to kill Winnie Katz, and the fake threat becomes a real one.

I'm old enough to remember radio shows, and that's what Friedman's style reminds me of — those great old shows where truly strange characters wander in and out every few minutes. You don't care about the plot — and God knows there isn't any theme — you just want more of the weird animals in the radio zoo.

Friedman has a nice touch with the modern dilemma of political correctness. He generally manages to offend everybody, which is the best way to do it. Upon occasion, however, some of the minority bashing gets tiresome (pretty easy targets for somebody as hip and clever as Kinky)...but for the most part the reader just revels in all the fun as Kinky practices his greatest skill, that of literary monologist. He has a particularly good eye for the refugees of the '60s and '70s. He's equally good at dialogue. It's virtually flawless. You never notice how much most of us whine until you run a couple pages of Kinkster dialogue past your eyeballs. What a bunch of crybabies we are. I don't think my generationwillever grow up (myself included), and I can cite Kinky's dialogue as evidence if I'm ever dragged into court.

What can I tell you? This is a genuinely funny, weirdly endearing book that earns its keep on wit rather than plot. But who cares about plot when you're having so much fun? This isn't to say he's not a serious writer. In his own way, he has more to say than a lot of the "serious" boys and girls who are always "transcending the genre."

The Kinkster has delivered another very good read.

—Ed Gorman

Ed Gorman's latest novels include Daughter of Darkness, Harlot's Moon, and Black River Falls, the latter of which "proves Gorman's mastery of the pure suspense novel," says Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. ABC-TV has optioned the novel as a movie. Gorman is also the editor of Mystery Scene magazine, which Stephen King calls "indispensable" for mystery readers.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Just as every dog must have its day, so must every Sherlock have his Watson - even if the Sherlock in question resides in a downtown loft with an ill tempered cat, a perpetually smiling puppet head, and ceiling badly in need of repair, all thanks in no small part to the often-less-than-light-on-its-feet lesbian dance class held daily in the loft above.. "And just as misery loves company, so does Kinky Friedman, the erstwhile Sherlock in question, love his tormentors from above - enough so that when someone sends a threatening missive to the head lesbian danceperson, Winnie Katz, Kinky, in a mood of forgive-and-forget, sets out to find the perpetrator and to save the day.. "Of course, just as nothing is ever as it seems, so is Kinky "Ace Private Big Dick" Friedman, not quite as altruistic as he may appear - for, in fact, it was the Kinkster, himself who wrote the threatening note to Ms. Katz, and then called upon each of his ubiquitous Village Irregulars (the mighty Mike McGovern, the mercurial Ratso Sloman, the marvelous Stephanie Dupont, and the masterful Steve Rambam) to solve the mystery, and in the process give Kinky a first-rate opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of each of his would-be Watsons.. "But just as it's not where you start but where you finish, so does Kinky soon find himself caught up in a conundrum of Sherlockian proportions when the bogus death threat turns suddenly, chillingly real - and an actual killer steps forward to carry out Kinky's impotent threat.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Frenetic amateur PI Kinky Friedman is up to his old tricks in this campy mixture of bawdy surrealism and Tom Sawyerish pranks. Kinky's sleuthing duties have taken a decidedly sluggish turn when the roof literally comes crashing in. His upstairs neighbor, Winnie Katz, a lesbian dance instructor, has been stomping through dance routines with her students for weeks on end and all the pounding has taken its toll on Kinky's crumbling ceiling. Kinky calls in an old favor from a mob-connected friend, and suddenly finds two oafish Italian workmen at his door promising to repair the ceiling as a favor to Joey the Hyena. The Hyena is indebted to Kinky for saving his daughter from a mugger, but Kinky learns from the workmen that Joey's daughter died three years before Kinky saved her. Annoyed that his Manhattan loft is virtually under siege and by the twist in the story of the daughter, Kinky decides to divert himself by writing death threats to Winnie. In an impulsive move, Kinky takes the prank one step further by offering Winnie the services of his good friends, aka "The Village Irregulars," to ferret out the source of the threats. The five "Watsons" are no sooner ensnared in Kinky's humorous web of deceit than a real stalker appears on the scene, threatening to kill Winnie for real. All's well that ends well in this slim mystery, but the ultimate moment of truth falls flat. Hardy fans of the indomitable Friedman won't be disappointed, however, with this rollicking followup to Blast from the Past. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

A bunch of PI Kinky Friedman hangers-on are vying for the role of official sidekick, so the Kinkster suggests that they try to figure out who sent his upstairs neighbor a death threat. He doesn't realize until too late just how serious this death threat really is. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Since he already shares so many of the hallmarks of that other Sherlock Holmes—drug use, sexual confusion, and his own Village Irregulars—why shouldn't Kinky Friedman, the Sherlock of Vandam Street, have his own Dr. Watson? And what better occasion to audition potential Watsons from among the Irregulars than the death threats someone's scribbled to Winnie Katz, the man-hating lesbian dancer instructor upstairs? So p.i. Steve Rambam bugs Winnie's apartment to get more info; reporter McGovern and photographer Mick Brennan pretend to be with the Times of London to interview her; upstairs neighbor Stephanie Dupont goes undercover as a new dance student; so does Ratso Sloman, disguising himself as Barney Frank supporter Roscoe Figbiter to take Winnie's friends out for pizza. What none of the Watsonabes knows is that the threatening note was written by the Kinkster himself, smashed, stoned, and furious at the plaster the constant twinkle-toes above have shaken loose from his ceiling and sent falling on his head. But if the whole cockeyed caravan is based on nothing more than Kinky's prank, why is somebody in a Fred Flintstone mask breaking into Winnie's apartment to threaten her for real? And can Kinky rouse himself from his reveries of legendary professional gas-passer Le Petomaine (1857￯﾿ﾽ1945) and lopsided conversations with his cat to solve the mystery? Out of all Kinky's dozen cases (Blast from the Past, 1998, etc.), this is the first one in which the plot doesn't interrupt the flow of laugh-out-loud jokes, because the whole plot is one big joke. Solid gold for fans, and the only Kinky adventure non-fans will ever need.