THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 22, 1996 TAG: 9609230252
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY GEORGE HOLBERT TUCKER
LENGTH: 67 lines
THE LOVE SONG OF J. EDGAR HOOVER
KINKY FRIEDMAN
Simon & Schuster. 238 pp. $23.
The only proper way to describe Kinky Friedman's latest caper as an East Greenwich Village sleuth is to use his favorite superlative - ``it is a killer bee.''< But don't make the mistake of thinking The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover is just another temporarily gripping potboiler to be tossed aside after being used to fill up the vacuity of existence.
In this, his ninth mystery, the Kinkster locks horns with none other than the formidable FBI. But because his adventures along the way are suffused with his own unique brand of offbeat humor, which holds a telling mirror up to the shams of today's rat race, The Love Song transcends potboiler status.
Briefly, the plot involves what initially seems to be two disparate themes. First, Kinky is sweet-talked by a sexy blonde into trying to locate her missing husband. Second, McGovern, the Kinkster's oversized half-Indian, half-Irish reporter friend, has been receiving threatening midnight telephone calls from an old Chicago buddy named Leaning Jesus - or so it seems.
The fact that Leaning Jesus also happens to have been Al Capone's chef adds a sinister taste to the already heady brew.
Unwilling to turn down the blonde's hefty retainer for locating her spouse, Kinky also reluctantly takes on trying to help McGovern, never dreaming that the two cases are entangled. Then, after barely escaping from a drug bust in Washington, D.C., in which he is wounded, and later almost being charred to death in a gasoline-soaked limousine in Chicago, Kinky realizes he has been used by the blonde, an FBI agent, to get close to McGovern, who she believes knows where Capone stashed some loot.
But I mustn't let any further cats out of the bag.
Since his first mystery, Greenwich Killing Time, Friedman has created a series of mysteries that are rapidly taking their place with the canonical adventures of Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, the Kinkster's favorite sleuth.
Because his mysteries are so well written, the adventures of the hawkshaw of Vandam Street - and his cat - are even better during a second, third or even fourth reading. As they are all permeated with definitely politically incorrect allusions, they have a special place on the whodunit honor roll.
Friedman draws on his own richly varied personal experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer and as a singer and guitar picker in a country-western band irreverently known as The Texas Jew Boys. He thus adds color and brio to the adventures of his fictional shamus, whom he shamelessly projects under his own name.
What is more, most of the Kinkster's characters include his most intimate real-life friends. He trots them out, warts and all, to serve his fictional purposes - if their idiosyncrasies can propel the action or add zest to his offbeat situations.
But there is another facet to Friedman's writing that provides a refreshing contrast to his otherwise zany and cynical output. This is his occasional reference to the innocence that most of us have irrevocably lost. These touches make any sensitive reader ponder how or why Wordsworth's ``shades of the prison house'' ever transformed his or her life from an inborn naivete to the nightmare of everyday living. Being a good writer, however, Friedman uses these wistful reflections sparingly.
Friedman's latest is his best as far as well-defined characterization and a superb climax are concerned. Any lover of a well-written yarn will keep turning the pages until the last scene on ``the stoic sidewalks of New York'' unfolds. MEMO: George Holbert Tucker is a columnist for The Virginian-Pilot. by CNB