Truly horrible, I strongly suggest you keep
away from it!
Again we are in NYC in the sleazy surrounding (this time it’s
burlesque) and basically what happens is close to this: there’s a show where
one of performers gets killed on the stage and our hero is present among few
other strippers (dancing girls). For the reasons not clear (at least not to me)
he becomes main suspect, so for the rest of the book he wonders around (because
his time is running out…) trying to prove his innocence by playing amateur
detective who more or less just interviews remaining five girls in somewhat
bizarre/amusing (we’ll come to that again shortly) circumstances. In all this
time only three more characters are introduced: producer of the show who is
another burlesque artist, our hero’s wife (yes, another one) and some “creep in the overcoat”.
So we face Agatha Christie kind of shitty
set-up of some exotic environment where murder strikes unexpectedly and there’s
closed circle of suspects, each of them of course having bulletproof alibi. I
swear to god that in the middle of this crap I actually thought about “Murder on
the Orient Express”. Because, you see, our victim wasn’t popular with any of
the other protagonists because she stole their burlesque acts. Which is
apparently such a big deal in the dirty, sinister and morally corrupted
underworld of NYC burlesque that one can easily get killed for?
Idea about twisting classical crime genre
and its main protagonist into some unusual (sub)cultural environment is
certainly not new one and probably some skilful writer could even get away
somehow with such a poor story and lack of plot/mystery/suspense/whatever. What
makes this novel painful to read is its “humorous” tone. Author is constantly
trying to be clever and witty, but jokes are really pathetic. I don’t know, I
guess some 15 years adolescent will find them funny, I certainly felt sometimes
like putting off cigarettes in my palm. And it gets from bad to worse when
Jonny Porkpie feels a need to apologize for his bad jokes, like:
- “Sorry about that. Habit. That sort of gag usually gets a laugh when I’m onstage, hosting a show…”
- “The rest of you won’t have any idea what that last sentence means, but trust me; it’s hilarious”
- “She smiled, to indicate that she was aware that I was attempting to be amusing.”
- “Neither of us laughed, probably because it wasn’t funny”
And this relentless shit just doesn’t stop.
It goes on and on and on and becomes truly unbearable when he even starts to
explain these “jokes” in case we are too stupid to get them. I think the
only one I actually liked was when he called investigating police officers
Brooklyn and Bronx. But this is ruined immediately in the next paragraph when
we learn that “Those weren’t the
officer’s name, by the way. Those were their accents.” No shit, really?!!?
Enough of this ranting, it was more than
this book deserves anyway and it only made me pissed off again. I try to find
something different, interesting, amusing, basically anything good in any book
I read, but really nothing at all is here. Sorry Jonny Porkpie, but I don’t
think we’ll ever meet again.
1/5
Facts:
Hero:
Jonny Porkpie, “the Burlesque Mayor of New York City”. Cops sometimes refer to him as “Senator of Striptease”
Jonny Porkpie, “the Burlesque Mayor of New York City”. Cops sometimes refer to him as “Senator of Striptease”
Location:
New York, present time
New York, present time
Dames:
burlesque dancers Victoria Vice, Cherries Jubilee, Jillian Knockers, Angelina Blood, Eva Desire, Brioche a Tete, LuLu LaRue and Filthy Lucre. Plus some chick with blue Mohawk playing in heavy metal band. Btw, a bit off topic – I’ve seen million of punk/hard-core bands and thousands of metal bands and can’t remember the last time I saw chick with Mohawk in metal band…
burlesque dancers Victoria Vice, Cherries Jubilee, Jillian Knockers, Angelina Blood, Eva Desire, Brioche a Tete, LuLu LaRue and Filthy Lucre. Plus some chick with blue Mohawk playing in heavy metal band. Btw, a bit off topic – I’ve seen million of punk/hard-core bands and thousands of metal bands and can’t remember the last time I saw chick with Mohawk in metal band…
Body
count: 1
Cool
lines:
none as far as I’m concerned, but I’m pretty sure Mr. Porkpie thinks every single sentence is divine.
none as far as I’m concerned, but I’m pretty sure Mr. Porkpie thinks every single sentence is divine.
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