Like a Hole in the Head [Paperback]

Jen Banbury (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1999

Jill, a part-time bookseller with a biting wit, gets her hands on a rare, first-edition novel by Jack London -- courtesy of a suspicious-looking dwarf. Soon, a polite assassin arrives, with the dwarf in tow, demanding the book back. But Jill has already unloaded the valuable tome, and, as she values her life, immediately sets off to recover it. As an outrageous cast of thugs, sycophants, and central casting rejects join in the chase for the elusive volume and the special secret it contains, Jill finds herself cheated, kidnapped, drugged, tortured, and even forced to work as a movie extra. Twisted and subversive, Jen Banbury's debut is a mad, breathtaking romp through a hilariously dark vision of contemporary America.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The same marinade of lonely-girl tough-talk that flavored Barbara Seranella's Edgar Award-nominated first novel, No Human Involved, enriches playwright Jen Banbury's wonderfully raucous and raunchy debut, Like a Hole in the Head. Banbury's mystery is also set in a Los Angeles made memorable by fresh insights. "I took Venice Boulevard," says Jill, who works in a used bookstore. "Past all the two-story apartment buildings where old women laid out their cast-off clothes like a distress signal. They would sit around in beach chairs waiting to sell wrinkled muumuus for two bucks a pop. Past the strip malls with the five dollar manicure places. Past Donut Heaven, Donut Time, Winchell's Donuts, Time for Donuts, I Love Donuts, Falafel and Donuts, Jimmy's Donuts, and Dough-nutty. Past the Hare Krishna temple. I had gone there once for a free vegetarian meal. They asked me to leave before serving me. You have to chant before you can eat and I kept saying 'Hairy Hitler' instead of Hare Krishna. The girl praying next to me blew the whistle. I was hungry and I shouldn't have been such a wiseass. I've heard the food is pretty good." There's also a plot, of sorts: a rare first edition of a Jack London work drops Jill into a bizarre and dangerous substrata of desperate dwarfs, failed actors, and lethal antiquarian book dealers. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Part mystery, part hijinks, this first novel by Banbury (author of the play How Alex Looks When She's Hurt) takes the reader on an outrageous romp through a tough, gritty and eccentric criminal world. The antics begin when Jill, a sharp-tongued college grad working at The Bitter Muse bookstore in L.A., buys a first edition of Jack London's The Cruise of the Snark from a dwarf. She rapidly sells the book to a rare-books dealer for a tidy profit?only to discover that it wasn't the dwarf's to sell. When an oversized goon (whose moniker is "Joke Man") tells her she must find the book or suffer the consequences, Jill sets off on a wild goose chase through Hollywood Hills and Las Vegas, pursued by hired thugs, booksellers, a film mogul and an assortment of underworld figures who variously seduce, torture and cheat her?even, at one point, coerce her to act as a movie extra. Jill endangers the life of her one close friend before she is able to retrieve the book and learn the reason why so many are in hot pursuit, all the while musing over the lethargy she has felt since her mother's death several years ago. Although the wit and wisecracks of Banbury's hard-boiled heroine make this a lively read, the plot is not as neatly conceived as it needs to be, and the book comes to a rather limp close. Nevertheless, fans of the neo-noir will appreciate this wry, outlandish debut.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Mysterious Press (April 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446675172
• ISBN-13: 978-0446675178
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (81 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #423,616 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beware the Joke Man, December 31, 2002

By 

bonsai chicken (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Like a Hole in the Head (Hardcover)

Jill enjoys her part time job at the secondhand bookstore because she gets a lot of time to read. One day a fidgety dwarf comes into the store with a rare first edition he'd like to sell. Jill takes it off his hands for a modest price and soon resells it. It isn't long, however, before the original owner of the book wants it back. Jill has to find the book, or things will get very ugly. So Jill embarks on a wild quest that leads her to Las Vegas and back to L.A. in time to be coerced into appearing as an extra in a famous director's new film. All the while a cadre of third-rate actors are hot on her tail.

LIKE A HOLE IN A HEAD is a hip and very funny mystery-adventure with a witty, sarcastic protagonist. (Just my type!) There are laughs on every page, even during the nasty bits. My only small complaint is with Banbury's writing style. She's constantly breaking up what should be longer sentences into fragments. It's really distracting. Better editing would have helped, but it's well worth overlooking.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Maltese Falcon meets Marx Brothers, March 24, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Little Rock, Ark.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Like a Hole in the Head (Hardcover)

Like a Hole in the Head is that rare piece of fiction that you can't put down. I let 15 people read the first page and all of them wanted to borrow the book when I finished, and several said they were going to buy it that day. It's also one of those memorable books, like Catch-22 or an early Garrison Keillor, that made me laugh out loud and not be able to continue reading for a while. There are pages and pages of passages that I email and read to friends, even on the telephone, even long distance, particularly the Monster Truck episode. Banbury is a screaming original, even as she uses all the noir devices from crime fiction and pulp movies, which she should know since in real life she casts cheap movies. She'd better be set for interesting times and be good with handling money, because she has written a book that she can take to the bank and to Hollywood. It's only a matter of time before Quentin Tarantino or Robert Altman buys this book for the screen, if it hasn't already happened. The plot: Jill, a resilient yet emotionally broken recent college grad has landed a job in a seedy used bookstore, the Bitter Muse, after driving around aimlessly when her mother dies. From there, it's a purely original story, part slapstick mixed with crime (a truly terrifying kidnapping scene), sort of Maltese Falcon meets an updated Marx Brothers via a smuttier and sassier Dorothy Parker. Like a Hole in the Head is a first novel from a young Yale grad who works in Hollywood. Maybe that's why the book is so scripted and movie-ready. But it doesn't matter. Let's have the movie.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Raymond Chandler meets the movie"Slacker", January 25, 2001

By 

Kyle Garrett (Chicago,ILL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Like a Hole in the Head (Paperback)

I've read this book 3 times and it always hits me from a new and quirky angle. It's re-awakened my interest in hard boiled detective fiction ala Hammett and Chandler."Like a Hole in the Head"flows like "The Long Goodbye" with more angst and black humor. Do yourself right and get this...