Friedman, Kinky: The Prisoner of Vandam Street

Simon & Schuster © 2004, 240 pages [amazon]

Confined to his New York apartment at 199B Vandam Street  for six weeks after contracting malaria--the "only truly deadly strain" of the disease--private detective Kinky Friedman (not to be confused with his creator, author, country singer, and potential future governor of Texas Kinky Friedman) happens to see, Rear Window-style, a woman brutally beaten in an apartment across the street. The problem is, feverish and delirious as he's been, Kinky does not make the most convincing of witnesses, and neither the police he summons nor his gang of variously accented, frequently inebriated cronies--the so-called "Village Irregulars," the collective Grace Kelly to his laid up Jimmy Stewart--believes him. When further investigation suggests Kinky wasn't imagining things, the game, as he and Sherlock like to say, is afoot.

The problem is, feverish and delirious as he's been, Kinky does not make the most convincing of witnesses, and neither the police he summons nor his gang of variously accented, frequently inebriated cronies--the so-called "Village Irregulars," the collective Grace Kelly to his laid up Jimmy Stewart--believes him.But the mystery in The Prisoner of Vandam Street is in a sense beside the point, entertaining though it is, for Kinky Friedman's novel is a departure from standard mystery fare. The author's prose is bursting with word play and Conan Doyleisms and pop culture references and irreverent philosophical musings. If at times it borders on the cloying, his writing is far more often downright funny:

"Now, I'm not making light of people who are deaf or losing their hearing. I am not mocking a disability that afflicts millions of Americans as they grow older, effectively cutting them off to varying degrees from the hearing world. All I'm saying, and I'll try to speak loudly and slowly and enunciate clearly, is that they should get medical help or a hearing aid or a large, metal ear-horn like the kind that was used in medieval times, and stop constantly blaming hapless, sensitive friends like myself for mumbling."

Friedman also has a serious side, evidenced in the book's closing parable and in the sweetly moving, brief chapter on his--Kinky the character's as well as Kinky the man's--continued sense of loss after the death of his parents.

In short, mystery lovers with a taste for off-color jokes and pun-punctuated prose will get a kick out of Kinky.

Tags: book reviews, books, Kinky Friedman, Rear Window