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If you like your reading material ribald and your humor low brow, there’s a very good chance you’ll love this book. It’s a wildly satirical take on the detective novel, and it pulls no punches in its lovingly frontal assault on the classic genre. Burke’s potboiler prose comes at you via rapid-fire one-liners that litter each page with paralyzing puns, saucy similes, and murderous metaphors. Still, it’s not all style without substance. There’s an intricate plot that wittily weaves its way through both the seedy underbelly and the sun-splashed suburbs of Melbourne, Australia.
The central story involves the disappearance of multiple pizza delivery personnel. Of course that’s just Burke’s literary river from which many smarmy tributaries flow. Mayhem, murder, drug running, grave robbing, and even olive wars pop up along the way. Pedophilia makes an appearance as well, but thankfully not graphically.
A coterie of caustic characters serve as multiple narrators for this tawdry tale. They include a wisecracking gumshoe, a rumpled policeman, a knockout barmaid who doubles as an undercover agent for the Australian Security Intelligence Operation, a bald and bone-crushing killer, and more. In fact, one of the narrator's is actually a personal computer with a mind of its own. If that’s not enough, additional femme fatales and minor miscreants continually populate the pages to keep the plot churning and the laughs coming.
Satire isn’t for everyone, but if you like your literature liberally sprinkled with chuckles and topped off with a beer chaser, this book’s for you.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review