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Drop Dead, My Lovely [Bargain Price] [Paperback]

Ellis Weiner (Author)

(9 customer reviews) |

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Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2005

From Ellis Weiner, contributor to legendary humor publications National Lampoon and Spy as well as the New York Times, The New Yorker, and many more, comes a debut novel that's drop dead funny...

For Pete Ingalls, being a P.I. means walking the streets, wearing a fedora, and solving crimes. So, far he's got the first two of those down. Not bad for a mild-mannered bookstore clerk who got hit in the head with a ruthless stack of hardcovers, only to wake up in a daze of outdated wisecracks, tough talk, and no recollection of his former life.

Now, with a hard-boiled attitude and a thoroughly scrambled brain, Ingalls decides to open his own detective agency. He hires a mouthy dame as his secretary and the damsels in distress start showing up. Soon Pete's tracking down all sorts of shadowy characters-not to mention a real live dead body-with nothing to go on but a healthy dose of delusion behind his squinting eyes. And he's making a holy mess of everything...

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

#outer_postBodyPS { display: none; } #psGradient { display: none; } #psPlaceHolder { display: none; } #psExpand { display: none; } From Ellis Weiner, contributor to legendary humor publications National Lampoon and Spy as well as the New York Times, The New Yorker, and many more, comes a debut novel that's drop dead funny...

For Pete Ingalls, being a P.I. means walking the streets, wearing a fedora, and solving crimes. So, far he's got the first two of those down. Not bad for a mild-mannered bookstore clerk who got hit in the head with a ruthless stack of hardcovers, only to wake up in a daze of outdated wisecracks, tough talk, and no recollection of his former life.

Now, with a hard-boiled attitude and a thoroughly scrambled brain, Ingalls decides to open his own detective agency. He hires a mouthy dame as his secretary and the damsels in distress start showing up. Soon Pete's tracking down all sorts of shadowy characters-not to mention a real live dead body-with nothing to go on but a healthy dose of delusion behind his squinting eyes. And he's making a holy mess of everything...

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In his satiric first novel, humorist Weiner (The Joy of Worry) pokes fun at the private eye genre with mixed results. When Pete Ingalls comes to after being knocked unconscious by a pile of books in a Manhattan bookstore, he remembers only the hard-boiled detective novels he's read. He rents an office, dresses in 1940s-style clothing and hires small-time actress Stephanie Constantino to be his secretary. Mysterious, elusive Celeste Vroman asks him to find her missing married lover, attorney Jeffrey Litman. A second client, Catherine Flonger, wants Ingalls to discover if her husband, a famous TV news anchor, is seeing another woman. Blundering, naïve and inept, Ingalls nonetheless easily locates Litman, who confesses he's spurned Celeste for "class skirt" Olivia Cartwright, whose strangled body turns up in a seedy hotel room in the "prologue" that falls between chapters one and two. Mrs. Flonger makes finding her husband almost too easy. Breezy, often funny, this uneven book is rife with silly puns. When Stephanie tells Ingalls she's playing Viola in Twelfth Night, he quips, "Playing the fiddle while you're acting?" But there's some good writing, too: one character "had the pale, smooth skin of a man who went outside principally to hail cabs." Weiner clearly owes a debt to P.G. Wodehouse (a passage from The Code of the Woosters serves as an epigraph), but here he lacks the British master's sure comic touch.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Ellis Weiner was an original columnist for Spy Magazine and an editor of National Lampoon from 1976-1978. He contributed to all the best group satire projects of the day, including Not the New York Times and Off the Wall Street Journal. He has published numerous humor pieces in The New Yorker, Paris Review, and the New York Times Magazine, among others. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

Paperback: 288 pages
ISBN-10: 0451214080
ASIN: B000HWYYDK
Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,616,468 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

Just how inept can one detective be? July 17, 2005

By The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

Format:Mass Market Paperback

Peter Ingalls gets banged on the head by falling books in the store where he works and suffers amnesia. When he awakens, however, he is convinced that he is a private investigator. He proceeds to open an office and hire a wanna-be actress as an assistant who curses like a sailor and quits every five minutes only to regret it and ask to be taken back. Peter always obliges. He even hires her back when he fires her before she can quit.

He has two customers who come in for help. One has a missing boyfriend and the other thinks her husband is having an affair. Using 1940s private eye lingo and dressing the part so well people think he's wearing a costume, Peter manages to screw up both cases. He decides that both the women seeking help are actually lesbians who are having an affair with each other. Meanwhile, an actual murder and disappearance take place that are connected to his two cases. If it weren't for his foul-mouthed assistant, he'd never get to first base on either of his cases because, in real life, Peter is a na�ve mama's boy who lived at home until his accident. Peter's bumbling manages to cause all kinds of problems. His inept behavior, na�ve reaction to bad situations and brawls with his assistant cause laugh-out-loud reactions. Peter does manage to dig deep within himself and rise to the occasion and solve the mysteries.

In DROP DEAD, MY LOVELY, Ellis Weiner has created a charming character that you want to give advice to and help along. You actually find yourself yelling at Pete when he's getting ready to do something really dumb and telling him to lose the fedora and the double-breasted suit. His sassy assistant, Stephanie, adds a wonderful dimension to the insanity of the private detective's office and his clients aren't too sane either. It's a book that drags you into the action while entertaining you.

Reviewed by alice Holman

of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

Drop-dead funny March 18, 2004

By Adrianne Wood

Format:Hardcover

Amnesiac hero Pete Ingalls will have you laughing on every page. Believing that he is an old-style private eye, Pete calls the ladies "angel" and "doll"--getting decidedly mixed responses from today's liberated women. But the real action starts when the two cases he takes on sends him out on the streets to dig up clues. A bit like Steve Martin's "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" but far cleverer, "Drop Dead, My Lovely" will leave your sides aching.
-Adrian W.

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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful

Drop Dead Funny March 11, 2005

By Mark Baker HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

All Pete Ingalls remembers is waking up in the hospital. He has no recollection of the case that put him there. Still, he figures that the best things to do is get back to work, so he finds a new office, hires a secretary, and does just that.

See, Pete thinks he's a hardboiled PI in the very classic sense. And the two dames in distress that come calling seem to need him. One is looking for a missing lover. The other wants proof that her husband is having an affair. And while Pete has no clue what he's doing, his secretary, fortunately, does. But will it be enough to get them both through this in one piece?

I'm not familiar with the classic hardboiled detectives of the past, but the little I do know makes it obvious they were the inspiration for this hilarious tale. It's rather obvious to us early on that Pete has amnesia and is delusional. We keep getting clues about his past that put the pieces into place. The mystery plot of the story is also done extremely well. There were several nice twists up until the very end, when everything was wrapped up nice and neat. And the humor! I was laughing out loud the entire way through the book at the confusion of the other characters to Pete, his own confusion over literal interpretations, and his hilarious commentary on life. It was right up my sense of humor.

So why the four stars? This book had foul language that I'm not used to running into in a book. Lots and lots of it. It seemed to get better as the book went along, which I appreciated. There were also several cases of sexual innuendo I didn't care for and a sex scene that I skipped over but still could have done without. I'm well aware this will not bother most people out there, but it bothered me and lowered my enjoyment of the book. Since I'm the one rating it, I took that into account.

Overall, I enjoyed the book enough to give the sequel a chance. Here's hoping that it's as funny as this one was.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

All the gritty intrigue of a noir detective novel... but really funny...

Fans of noir detective novels will recognize that by titling his book "Drop Dead, My Lovely," author Ellis Weiner announces his intention to spoof 1940s style noir fiction right... Read more

Published 16 months ago by Timothy Poteet

Lighthearted and Brilliant

I drove by a bookstore in Dallas that was closing out it's inventory and bought several books for $1 each. I picked this one up on a whim. Read more

Published on July 14, 2008 by Darrell Scherbarth

Tried to Hard

This book could have been really fun but I think the author tried too hard to include "noir" sayings. Read more

Published on March 15, 2005 by EdHopper

Brilliant

This book is brilliantly clever and fun. I stayed up till four am reading it, then immediately read it again upon waking. Best fiction I've read in a long, long time.

Published on May 22, 2004 by sarah777

A Disgrace

This centaur of a book--half mystery, half comedy--will prove equally upsetting and confusing to readers of both comedy and mystery. What is so funny about someone being killed? Read more

Published on April 14, 2004

A great and original private eye tale

When he wakes up in the hospital, Pete Ingalls thinks he?s a private investigator and talks like a gumshoe out of a forties film. Read more

Published on March 2, 2004 by Harriet Klausner

Inside This Book (learn more)
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First Sentence:
"Mr. Ingalls!" She was a tall skirt, maybe five eight, a nurse with long brown hair clipped up in the back and big brown eyes that had seen things. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Catherine Flonger, Wendy Litman, Olivia Cartwright, Celeste Vroman, Pete Ingalls, Darius Flonger, New York, Jeffrey Litman, Atlantic City, Sea Note, Jesus Christ, Peter Ingalls, Hotel Urbane, Stephanie Constantino, Tad Phillips, Greg Higgins, Karen Juracyk, Miss Constantino, Jeff Litman, Seaside Books, Ted Eisenberg

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Citations (learn more)

This book cites 4 books:

The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse in Front Matter
The Goodbye Look by Ross Macdonald in Front Matter
Twelfth Night (Shakespeare Collection) by Jan Dean on page 60
Twelfth Night (Folger Shakespeare Library) by William Shakespeare on page 60

5 books cite this book:

Yiddish with Dick and Jane by Ellis Weiner in Back Matter
The King's English, Adventures of an Independent Bookseller by Betsy Burton on page 109
The Big Boat to Bye-Bye by Ellis Weiner in Front Matter
Yiddish with George and Laura by Ellis Weiner in Back Matter
Santa Lives!: Five Conclusive Arguments for the Existence of Santa Claus by Ellis Weiner in Back Matter

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