Blast from the Past
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Return with us now to those thrilling bygone days known as…The Seventies. It's 1974, and Blast From The Past is "…a plot devised by a devilishly clever mind, probably influenced by prohibited substances…" and "…the mother of all prequels…".
A younger, kinkier Kinky has just started performing at the Lone Star Cafe, and is also about to take on his first gig as an amateur detective: trying to figure out who is gunning for his houseguest, Barry Freed (a.k.a. on-the-run Yippie Abbie Hoffman). And, putting further demands on Kinky's budding Sherlockian skills, his new girlfriend, Judy, swears that she's being stalked by her ex-husband -- whose very dead body has recently been shipped back from Vietnam. Helping Kinky are Ratso, Steve Rambam, Mike McGovern and the rest of the Village Irregulars,
together for the very first time.
About "Blast From The Past", from the Author's Introduction: "Blast From The Past … offers a chance for the author and the reader to re-live that era known as the Sixties and the Seventies, when the music was great, the drugs were cheap, and the love was free. … Imagine being at the notorious Lone Star Café back in the Seventies when it was okay to do drugs, okay to have unprotected sex, okay to paddle a brat or spank a monkey. At the Lone Star in those days I was much younger and kinkier – uncouth, unshaped, unrepentant, and frequently unconscious. …"
Vandam Press is proud to be able to make this remarkable novel available again to Kinky’s old friends and to those readers worldwide who are discovering Kinky Friedman for the first time.
"Superbly silly…From beginning to end, the Kinkster keeps the gags coming fast and thick. … The world's funniest, bawdiest and most politically incorrect music singer turned mystery writer." (New York Times Book Review)
"Two Thumbs Up, and pardon the Barbecue smears." (Texas Monthly)
"Kinky is a hip hybrid of Groucho Marx and Sam Spade." (Chicago Tribune)
"Kinky's the best whodunit writer to come along since Dashiell What's-His-Name." (Willie Nelson)
"A true Texas legend." (former President George W. Bush)
"Dear Kinky, I have now read all of your books. More, please. I really need the laughs." (former President Bill Clinton)
"Friedman cinches his credentials as a great Southern storyteller. he combines the deductive moxie of a Chandler or a Hammett with the boisterous irreverence of a stream-of-consciousness raconteur, and the blend is a pungent delight." (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)
"Author Richard Friedman was given the nickname Kinky for his curly 'Jewish natural' hairdo, not for his sexual proclivities. But it might just as well been for his writing style, which is full of twists and turns and Friedman's particular brand of skewed humor." (USA Today)]
"Brash, crass and colorful." (Houston Chronicle)
"Smart, funny and tough." (Robert B. Parker, author)
"The Sam Spade of South Texas. Only soft boiled. And hipper. And funnier." (Sunday Mail)
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The 11th adventure from Texas-based Friedman, a former New York City musician who writes about band-player, amateur detective Kinky Friedman (Roadkill; The Love Song of Edgar J. Hoover; etc.), will delight early fans with its return to Greenwich Village and the Kinkster's sleuthing roots. In this prequel, which starts in the present, Kinky is hit on the head while walking up to the apartment of the elusive and beautiful Stephanie DuPont. Suddenly it's the late 1970s and Kinky is meeting his sidekick crew, the Village Irregulars, for the first time: Steve Rambam, Mike McGovern and Pete Myers. Larry "Ratso" Sloman (Kinky's own version of Dr. Watson) suggests that, since Kinky has a convoluted mind, he should become a detective. The detecting game begins when activist Abbie Hoffman comes in from the cold and crashes at Kinky's apartment. Abbie seems somewhat paranoid, but perhaps with reason. When the apartment gets blown up, Kinky starts down the sleuthing road, trying to deduce who might be stalking Abbie. Or is it Kinky himself that someone is after? Kinky says his old friend Abbie is "just one of the guys... who invented the sixties," but in this story Abbie is also a tragic, deluded symbol of how 1960s idealism was marginalized and ultimately ignored. This hearkening back is one of Friedman's best efforts, gathering amateur sleuthing, an eccentric cast and his trademark raunchy, irreverent over-the-top humor into an hilarious mix.
