"A delightfully raunchy mystery"
For private sleuth Kinky Friedman working on more than one
case at a time is just too much work. Yet now he is stuck
with two distinct investigations in different parts of the
country. The first case involves the search for a missing
eleven-year-old autistic child, Dylan Weinberg, whose
entire vocabulary consists of one expression "shnay". The
other case focuses on a vanished cat in Texas. For Kinky, the case he prefers to work on is the missing
boy, not because he is altruistic, but because Dylan's
sister Julia is a sexy siren. However, he finds himself at
Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch in Texas seeking the lost Lucky
whose owner Cousin Nancy Parker plans to call in the Feds
of several nations if Kinky does not find her purloined
feline soon. However, Kinky decides to work both cases
with the hope his consoling Julia turns more into her
consoling him. The latest Kinky Friedman novel can be summed up in one
word (not shnay, but kinky). The hero remains as
irreverent and wild as ever and his support cast, including
the irregulars as well as his current clients, enables
Kinky to be wackier than ever. Fans of the series will
fully relish his dividing time between Manhattan, the Texas
ranch, and even Schenectady as he takes no prisoners in
solving his cases. Harriet Klausner
Reviewed by PNR Group Member
Posted September 1, 2002
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It's a case of missing kid and missing kitty when Kinky
Friedman, private dick extraordinaire and animal lover
nonpareil, attempts to find a young, autistic New York boy
and a three-legged Texas cat named Lucky, both of whom have
disappeared.
Something is rotten in both the states of New York and
Texas, and Kinky takes it upon himself to locate not one,
but two of God's creatures who have gone astray. Dylan
Weinberg is an eleven-year-old boy with a rare form of
autism -- a pint-sized stock-market wizard who can only
utter one word, "Shnay." He's on a multitude of
medications, and one night his father wakes up to find
Dylan perched over his bed like some preteen zombie,
clutching a pair of scissors and cutting up the sheets.
Since that evening, two weeks ago, Dylan has been missing,
and the cops have no leads -- and apparently not much
interest. That's why, in an absolute last-resort maneuver,
the family has called in Kinky to the rescue.
And speaking of rescue, Kinky's second missing person --
make that missing pussy -- case comes courtesy of his
Cousin Nancy (no relationship), who, along with Kinky,
helped found the Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch in Utopia,
Texas. Lucky, the three-legged cat -- and unofficial mascot
of the ranch -- is gone, the victim of an apparent
kittynapping. Cousin Nancy is convinced the feline is
either in the hands of some nasty, contentious neighbors or
is being sacrificed by a satanic cult. No matter what, she
wants Kinky to find Lucky before he becomes coyote chow.
It's an uneven dilemma for Kinky -- stay in town and
concentrate on finding a sick, missing child (and
concentrate, too, on Julia, said child's beautiful, long-
legged sister), or hotfoot off to Texas, to help calm down
the frantic Cousin Nancy who's this close to proclaiming
Lucky's been abducted by aliens. Kinky puts his trust in
his faithful companion, Village Irregular Steve Rambam, to
help find the little boy while Kinky hightails it to
Utopia, Texas, where Nancy provides him with two witnesses
to the alleged crime -- a dim-sighted eighty-year-old lady
named Josephine and a frisky canine named Mr. Magoo.
Back in New York, Rambam has no clue where Dylan might be,
but he is becoming increasingly sure that Julia is the
Jewish answer to his romantic prayers. Kinky warns him to
put the wedding plans on hold and track down Hattie
Mamajello, Dylan's former nanny, but it's too little too
late when Hattie is pushed off a subway platform and
killed. The confusion generated by these two disparate
cases is enough to drive a dick to drink -- which Kinky is
happy to do -- but he's still got a missing kid and a
missing kitty on his cigar-stained hands to locate before
(a) Rambam whisks Julia off to Vegas for a quickie wedding
and (b) Cousin Nancy calls in the FBI, the CIA, and the
Mossad to find her Lucky.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, aided and abetted by a few
four-legged friends, the mystery of the purloined kitty
continues to grow. Then it's back to the wilds of midtown
Manhattan and the even wilder wilds of Sche-nectady, New
York, where, in their search for the missing boy, Kinky and
his two-legged cohort find themselves at an orphanage
Dickens would be proud of.
True to Kinky's form, and informed with truth, Meanwhile
Back at the Ranch is a wild and woolly (and furry) ride
from a true original, and entertainment at its most
outrageous.
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