Einstein in Flamingoland: Confessions of a Fellow Traveler

from a review by Joe Kilgore for The US Review of Books

"I feel as though I hadn’t had three and a half of my previous four wines. I believe the gumbo soaked breads have neutralized the alcohol not yet in my blood stream."

Think of a collection of characters similar to the ones you might find in an Elmore Leonard novel. Mix those with a fairly loose plot and a potentially freaky climax you could run across between the pages of a Jim Thompson potboiler. Add a dash of arguably one of the world’s most cosmic thinkers, and you’ll begin to get a feel for this road novel that would make Ken Kesey smile.

Gille, pronounced Jill, is a con fresh out of stir. Lightfoot is a Hopi taxi driver who escorts him to a primo hotel in Winslow, Arizona. Everything that happens after that is decidedly debatable, but potential incidents include an appearing and disappearing Albert Einstein, a tryst with the sister of Gille’s deceased wife, the purloining of a bag full of illicit drug money, a chase from one side of America to another, violence perpetrated by lowlifes on the elderly, the bender of all benders in New Orleans with escapees from a play Tennessee Williams should have written, plus muggings, mayhem, murder, and considerably more.

Brinner writes with a quick trigger finger on the irony key. He keeps his protagonist’s pronouncements pithy, his backstories beguiling, and his characters campy but captivating. No doubt his readers will be wondering what’s going to happen next virtually every step of the way. In addition to the author’s appealing prose, the book also features some black and white reproductions of his engaging brushwork. If you like novels that make you think, smile, re-think, then smile again, this is one for your nightstand.

RECOMMENDED by the US Review