From Amazon.com
Kinky's back, and Abbie Hoffman's got him. Or he's got Abbie. Or a mysterious man with dirty blonde hair and a faded camouflage jacket has them both in his gunsights. It's always hard to tell who the bad guys are, because the country-western singer turned author draws an almost invisible line between his real life and his fictional adventures. That, of course, is where the fun comes in. In
Blast from the Past, the Kinkster serves up an appetizer for his myriad fans--a prequel to such novels as
Roadkill and
The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover. The book explains how Kinky got into the detecting game and met up with the Greenwich Village irregulars who populate this popular series--Ratso, Rambam, McGovern, and the luscious Stephanie DuPont. The action takes place in the post-Watergate 1970s, when Abbie's hiding out in upstate New York, sex and drugs are de riguer, and nobody's ever heard of political correctness. The mystery is pretty simple--you can see the ending coming long before Kinky can--but that's never been the point of these bawdy, irreverent tales. To quote Friedman himself, "Being a private dick is pretty simple. Once you run out of cocaine, crazy ideas, and self-pitying bullshit, you're eventually left with the truth."
--Jane Adams
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From 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.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
