![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Clowns, hard-boiled
Jul. 12th, 2018 02:24 pmI met the author of Honk Honk, My Darling at a Chicago Writers' Association event, where he read an excerpt from the third book in the series. I thought it was very funny, so I bought #1 to try it out. #2 and #3 will soon be in my shopping basket.
Honk Honk My Darling is a parody of hard-boiled crime novels. It's set in a neighborhood of east coast US port city during the later part of WWII. Rex Koko is a clown. He's also a private detective. This is not as weird as it might be because the neighborhood he works in is populated by circus performers between traveling gigs. Rex gets hired to find the wife of a "flyer" (trapeze artist) who's gone missing. In true hard-boiled style, our hard-drinking clown-detective starts to accumulate bodies and bruises.
This is more of a novella then a novel, so it's a quick and breezy read. The story has the right mixture of humor and seriousness, while being true to the character style of hard-boiled fiction. It's not great literature, but it's a fun read presented in a professional manner.
Honk Honk My Darling is a parody of hard-boiled crime novels. It's set in a neighborhood of east coast US port city during the later part of WWII. Rex Koko is a clown. He's also a private detective. This is not as weird as it might be because the neighborhood he works in is populated by circus performers between traveling gigs. Rex gets hired to find the wife of a "flyer" (trapeze artist) who's gone missing. In true hard-boiled style, our hard-drinking clown-detective starts to accumulate bodies and bruises.
This is more of a novella then a novel, so it's a quick and breezy read. The story has the right mixture of humor and seriousness, while being true to the character style of hard-boiled fiction. It's not great literature, but it's a fun read presented in a professional manner.
