Frequent Flyer (Paperback)

The book opens with Kinky receiving a phone call from a mysterious stranger, telling him of a old friend's death. John Morgan, the deceased in question, had served with Kinky in the Peace Corps Volunteers in Borneo. Kinky immediately makes arrangements to attend the funeral in Cleveland - which is exactly where the trouble begins. He recognises only few people at the funeral - Morgan's parents, for example, for photos he'd seen. However, he doesn't recognise the corpse, and - strangely - nobody else seems to have noticed that the wrong person is getting buried. On his return to Vandam Street, he receives another phone call. The caller, this time, is an Argentinean lady called Carmen. When he goes to meet her at her hotel, he discovers she's missing - apparently kidnapped. Before long, the ingredients to the mystery include a strange old man who wears blue flowers in lapel, some photos taken in the jungle, the 88 Leasing Corporation (incorporated in 1946) and a white tiger with blue eyes. During the investigation, he meets a number of less than savoury bad guys - luckily, he has people like Ratso, Rambam and John McGovern to help him out.

"Frequent Flyer" has much in common with the other books by Kinky I've read. While it's not what I would call a serious 'whodunit' - some loose ends are left dangling - it is a fast moving and easily read book. It's also packed with superbly delivered one-liners. As an author, Kinky has been described as irreverent - though that might be putting it mildly !

Kinky receives a mysterious call to inform him that an old buddy from the peace corp days has passed away, but the open-casket funeral belies the first ominous clue in a string of them...he's never seen the corpse before in his life. Thus begins the task of finding out where the switcharoo took place and what his friend had stumbled onto before disappearing without a trace. Not to mention all of the old Nazis that keep popping up.

I didn't enjoy this addition to the Kinky saga as much as his first two (Greenwich Killing Time and A Case Of Lone Star), but it's notable for its intriguing subject matter. Plot has never been the key to a Friedman novel, anyway, as long as our hero keeps popping off life lessons like shots from his bull horn full of Jameson's. Eavesdropping on his internal dialogue regarding his past is worth the price of admission, and there are many nostalgic passages about his younger days that reveal more about the author than ever before.

It's a short book, but unfortunately it's even shorter on character development. The emphasis here is on the past and Kinky's own thoughts (he even goes to a psychiatrist!). This was probably a necessary stop along the path to developing what's become one of my favorite sleuths, but it wasn't the most enjoyable by a long shot. With all of the ruminating going on, there's not much room for developing the storyline, and I was left feeling a little underwhelmed.

The next day, I bought Frequent Flyer. Now I will buy the rest.

This story is interesting on its own - a dead man who is not, a beating and Nazis. But the key to its impact is the series of references and philosophies that intermingle within the context of the story. The world is both complex and simple - often at the same time. Kinky's stories bring this forth.

I liked Elvis, Jesus and Coca-Cola better. But I enjoyed Frequent Flyer a lot.