The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A beautiful client, a missing husband, a false identity and a dead body…it's the classic private eye setup, with a Kinky twist. A mysterious mobster named Leaning Jesus, a rogue FBI unit and the Chicago mafia play supporting roles in this "instant classic". This is "a novel to be read for the sheer joy of it."
About "The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover", from the Author's Introduction: "…This novel is simply what it professes to be: a novel. But through what Mark Twain called “abstruse learning,” the reader can discern clearly that quite often the differences between the mob and the FBI are not as great as their similarities. Invoking the wrath of either organization, of course, requires pawn shop balls. … The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover, to be sure, gets closer than Geraldo Rivera ever did to solving the mystery of what actually became of Al Capone’s secret fortune. …"
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.
" A killer bee…his latest is his best." (The Virginian Pilot)
"The world's funniest, bawdiest and most politically incorrect music singer turned mystery writer." (New York Times Book Review)
"The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover is a true page-turner and a guilty pleasure." (The Toledo Blade)
"A novel to be read for the sheer joy of it." (The Baltimore Sun)
"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
Gonzo crime writer and former country singer Friedman's rambling ninth book (God Bless John Wayne) featuring ornery, cigar-munching, amateur sleuth Kinky Friedman brims with political paranoia and male bonding. The Kinkster is rescued from melancholia when mysterious, slinky Polly Price visits his West Village loft in Manhattan and, "rising out of the fog like a pirate ship," hires him to locate her missing husband, a well-heeled New York lawyer. While sorting through the man's legal and financial affairs, Kinky is sidetracked by his distressed buddy Michael McGovern (a member of Kinky's entourage, The Village Irregulars), who claims he's being shadowed by government agents. McGovern also says he's getting calls from a long-deceased man named Leaning Jesus who used to be Al Capone's chef and may or may not have left McGovern clues to the mobster's buried treasure. The lawyer quest leads Kinky into a sequence of deadly setups (he is framed with a suitcase full of cocaine, shot in the arm by the police and trapped in a flaming limousine in Chicago) before he begins to realize that that case was a pretext meant to prevent him from rescuing McGovern from an FBI sting. Distracting digressions, wacky nostalgia trips, remarkably bad puns and Kinky's miasmic self-absorption blur the finer points of the story line. But by his own admission, the Kinkster is a hapless gum-shoe, relying on Sherlock Holmes stories and sleuthing mentor, Rambam, to unravel a case that's built on plenty of unlikely twists and revelations. 100,000 first printing; QPB alternate; author tour.
Customer Reviews
Please sir, can I have another?
Dear Kinky,
Have read everything. Love it all. How about a trip to Europe for the Village Irregulars?