THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 11, 1994 TAG: 9409090620
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY EARL SWIFT
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
ARMADILLOS & OLD LACE
KINKY FRIEDMAN
Simon & Schuster. 236 pp. $21.
Hebrew cowpoke Kinky Friedman is a far better novelist than he was a musician.
This'll be good news to anyone still recovering from the country singer's two 1970s albums, which made aesthetic criminals of Friedman and his politically way-incorrect band, the Texas Jewboys.
Today, Friedman (Elvis, Jesus & Coca-Cola) lives in the hill country between Dallas and San Antonio, Texas, cranking out mysteries in which he casts himself as a muddled, not entirely fearless, but lucky, private investigator.
In Armadillos & Old Lace, his eighth mystery, Friedman's on the trail of a serial killer with a penchant for old ladies - that is, when he's not dispensing sage Texasisms and bagging laundry at his family's mesquite-studded children's camp.
Seems the sheriff in this part of the state is a bit slow on the uptake, leaving Friedman no choice but to pursue the killer himself. So, with occasional help from a feisty justice of the peace in the next town over, the cigar-smoking, Stetson-wearing Friedman meanders from clue to clue until he accidentally stumbles on the murderer's identity.
The story is interesting enough, but it's Friedman's hilariously overwritten style - and the cheesiness of his pseudo-autobiographical hero - that sets it apart.
His character blends Jewish angst, William Barrett Travis' reverence for Texas and the language of a hardboiled dick in a 1930s Warner Brothers flick.
``Whether your destination is heaven or hell,'' Friedman growls, ``first you have to change planes in Dallas-Fort Worth.''
``I kissed her once gently,'' he writes in a more romantic moment. ``Then longer and harder until her lips took on the familiar feel of the well-worked webbing of a kid's first baseball glove.''
And, while introspective: ``They were murders - a string, a chain, a cheap imitation necklace strung together by a madman, the end of which was nowhere in sight.
``This knowledge pressed brutishly against the translucent butterfly wings of my soul as I flitted in and out of camp activities, my mind always returning to the little old ladies who'd been hastened, if ever so slightly, through death's door.''
You get the idea. Understated, it ain't. Nonsense, it's very close to.
But it makes for a fast, funny read. MEMO: Earl Swift is a staff writer.
ILLUSTRATION: Jacket design by JANET PERR
Photo
Kinky Friedman's ``Armadillos & Old Lace'' is his eighth mystery.
by CNB