From Library Journal
The popular sf writer (World of Tiers, St. Martin's, 1996) tries his hand at mystery?with spectacular results. Tom Corbie, a former LAPD detective turned private investigator in Peoria, protects a mysterious woman while she makes a blackmail payment. The transfer becomes violent, the woman disappears, and Corbie is held captive by three dangerously stupid thieves. Just as he seems clear of that case, Peoria's richest man asks him to investigate his son's opportunistic and spendthrift new wife. Intense action, Corbie's in-your-face attitude and Wiccan wife, old-money family secrets, and off-the-track characters make this a joy to read.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Kirkus Reviews
After an extended prologue in which Tom Corbie, Peoria's most marginal p.i., takes $1,000 for backing up an unidentified client who's making a questionable payoff in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night--and then Corbie ends up getting held prisoner by a pair of backwoods lowlifes and their fearsome shared wife--Farmer gets down to semi-serious business. Simon Grettirson Alliger, the moneybags of Peoria's first family, wants a thorough, nasty background check on Diana Alliger, the new daughter-in-law he's convinced is fouling his son Roger's nest. Simon's already edgy because he's barely survived a recent attack by bees, and he fears his allergies would make any encore his last; his wife Alexandra suffers from asthma and a dozen other life-threatening conditions; and his mother Faith, though still sprightly at 92, obviously isn't long for this world. All will die, colorfully, with an escort of several others, and Corbie will end up with a lot more wear on him than any fledgling shamus since Harry Angel. And, yes, in case you were worried, Corbie's anonymous first client will make a notable reentry at just the right moment. Science-fiction veteran Farmer crosses a pair of plots from Raymond Chandler and Rex Stout with a hundred names--Sheridan Mutts, Lemangelo Elseed, Artemis Moondeer--from the Crazytown White Pages to produce some high-spirited, pro forma pulp aimed at readers who wonder how Indiana Jones would've worked as a private eye. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
"A kind of American Magic Realist detective novel about...Peoria."--Norman Spinrad

"His imagination is certainly of the first rank."--Time

"A master writer's fast-moving, gruesomely hilarious romp through the dark side of the heartland."--David Drake



Book Description
This one is for fans of Quentin Tarantino and of the ever-present gratuitous violence of Robert Altman. It is a direct descendant of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer and the mystery action pulps epitomized by Black Mask. Philip José Farmer, now one of the great living SF writers, who has published many varieties of pulp fiction, who has written novels of Tarzan, Doc Savage, and Oz, now turns his hand to the detective novel, with colorful, violent results.

A self-obsessed private detective married to a sincere wiccan is hired to witness an illegal transfer of money in a rainy cemetery that goes bloody wrong. Chasing the bad guys, he ends up the prisoner of a grusome threesome in their Dogpatchy cabin in the woods. His escape involves nudity, blood, death, and a terrible snapping turtle.

That's how the mystery begins, leading him through all the levels of Peoria society, geography, and history. Absurdly funny things happen continually in the peripheral vision of the story. No violence is left out. Greed, venality and hatred are unleashed. Unpleasant family history is brought to light. All the sex is offstage. The body count mounts steadily, with occasional mutilations. Nothing Burns in Hell is pulp fiction at its most gorgeously excessive.



About the Author
Philip José Farmer lives with his family in Peoria, Illinois. He has published more than forty novels, including such classics as The Lovers and To Your Scattered Bodies Go and the rest of the Riverworld series.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This one is for fans of Quentin Tarantino and of the ever-present gratuitous violence of Robert Altman. A self-obsessed private detective married to a sincere wiccan is hired to witness an illegal transfer of money in a rainy cemetery, a transaction that goes bloody wrong. Chasing the bad guys, he ends up the prisoner of a gruesome threesome in their Dogpatchy cabin in the woods. His escape involves nudity, blood, death, and a terrible snapping turtle. That's how the mystery begins. Then it leads the private eye through all the levels of Peoria society, geography, and history. Absurdly funny things happen continually in the peripheral vision of the story. No violence is left out. Greed, venality, and hatred are unleashed. Unpleasant family history is brought to light. All the sex is offstage. The body count mounts steadily, with occasional mutilations.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

The popular sf writer (World of Tiers, St. Martin's, 1996) tries his hand at mysterywith spectacular results. Tom Corbie, a former LAPD detective turned private investigator in Peoria, protects a mysterious woman while she makes a blackmail payment. The transfer becomes violent, the woman disappears, and Corbie is held captive by three dangerously stupid thieves. Just as he seems clear of that case, Peoria's richest man asks him to investigate his son's opportunistic and spendthrift new wife. Intense action, Corbie's in-your-face attitude and Wiccan wife, old-money family secrets, and off-the-track characters make this a joy to read.

Kirkus Reviews

After an extended prologue in which Tom Corbie, Peoria's most marginal p.i., takes $1,000 for backing up an unidentified client who's making a questionable payoff in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night—and then Corbie ends up getting held prisoner by a pair of backwoods lowlifes and their fearsome shared wife—Farmer gets down to semi-serious business. Simon Grettirson Alliger, the moneybags of Peoria's first family, wants a thorough, nasty background check on Diana Alliger, the new daughter-in-law he's convinced is fouling his son Roger's nest. Simon's already edgy because he's barely survived a recent attack by bees, and he fears his allergies would make any encore his last; his wife Alexandra suffers from asthma and a dozen other life-threatening conditions; and his mother Faith, though still sprightly at 92, obviously isn't long for this world. All will die, colorfully, with an escort of several others, and Corbie will end up with a lot more wear on him than any fledgling shamus since Harry Angel. And, yes, in case you were worried, Corbie's anonymous first client will make a notable reentry at just the right moment. Science-fiction veteran Farmer crosses a pair of plots from Raymond Chandler and Rex Stout with a hundred names—Sheridan Mutts, Lemangelo Elseed, Artemis Moondeer—from the Crazytown White Pages to produce some high-spirited, pro forma pulp aimed at readers who wonder how Indiana Jones would've worked as a private eye.