Customer Reviews

MORTAL NUTS: A NOVEL

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Senior citizens hold sway in this funny, funny novel. Seventy-three-year-old Axel Speeter runs a taco concession stand at the Minnesota State Fair. Tommy Fabian, who stands 62"in cowboy boots and stetson hat, has a license to print money at Tiny Tot Donuts. Axel's former poker-playing buddy and expert mechanic Sam O'Gara also makes an appearance (He's Joe Crow's dad. Joe is Pete Hautman's reluctant detective in most of his books).
The set-up is this: Axel doesn't trust banks; he's got $260,000 stashed in coffee cans at the Motel 6 where he lives. Sam has hired his girlfriend Sophie Roman's daughter Carmen to work at his confession stand. She detests the place; she's also dating a skinhead named James Dean, who wants to relieve Axel of his money, but not before he tries to mug Tommy Fabian. If you've ever watched midget wrestling you have a pretty good idea of what a one-sided proposition that was. Tommy refers to James Dean as that "bald monkey".
The Minnesota State Fair is definitely the star vehicle here. Hautman has O'Gara pinch hit for Tommy at one point doing which time he says, "Gotta get myself a joint like this, sell deep-fried lutefisk on a stick or some goddamn thing." Sam also owns a pair of vicious dogs named Chester and Festus who're almost as funny as Sam.
Some critics compare Pete Hautman to Carl Hiaasen. I'll admit I've only read one of Hiaasen's books and I may be prejudiced because of all the Minnesota references, but I'd say Hautman is Charlie Chaplin to Hiaasen's Pinky Lee.

This is the first book I read by this author, and it is great!
I have since read most of his other works and they are also very good. Rag Man, Ring Game, Drawing Dead, Short Money, Doohickey are all worth reading, but The Mortal Nuts, for me, is the best.
He has written some books more for children that I have not been interested in.
This is just a great read!

In the carnival midway of literature, you'll find Pete Hautman somewhere between Raymond Chandler and Raymond Queneau, wandering from attraction to attraction in a half-serious scavenger hunt for zany characters and offbeat plot twists.

Set at the Minnesota State Fair, The Mortal Nuts features a calculatedly improbable dramatis personae: Axel Speeter, a surly septuagenarian with a cash fortune stuffed into coffee cans; his buddy, donut mogul Tommy Fabian; Sophie Roman, Axel's stand manager and sometime bedfellow; Carmen, her Valium-popping daughter; Carmen's skinhead beau, an ex-con by name of James Dean; and a motley montage of characters that only a fair could bring together.

Treating these characters like human balloon-animals, Hautman twists them into a believably unbelievable caper plot that's fluffily engaging - and shamelessly unprofound - from beginning to end.

The Mortal Nuts is like a day at the fair, eating junk food and people-watching: it's by turns lighthearted and sordid, violent and naive, cheesy and sincere, frivolous and satisfying. No meaning-of-life headaches here - just a colorful, entertaining diversion.

I am new to reading this author, and I'm sorry I didn't findhim earlier. My favorite authors are Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiassen.Current authors I also like are James Lee Burke and Walter Moseley. I am also a fan of Joseph Wambaugh. I've been reading for years and can list other others, but I think this will give you a taste for what this book is like.

Character development is a strong element, and there's also humor. Yet suspense is also there. I was pretty impressed, and that doesn't happen too often these day because I read so much.

I recommend it highly if you have a taste for the other authors I mentioned. I'd write more about the plot, but you can get that with other reviews.

P.S. Let's help each other. Through Amazon.com, give the authors you like along with your reviews. This will help all of us make better selections.

Axel Speeter seems weird by most people's standards, but he seems to have everything under control, and likes it just fine. He's lived in a room at a Motel 6 for as long as he can remember. He keeps all of his clothes and personal belongings in milk crates and Folger's coffee cans stacked along one wall. He mistrusts banks and his life savings of $266,000 can also be found in those coffee cans. He runs a taco concession at the Minnesota State Fair. And his surrogate family consists of one of his workers, and her college-age daughter.

In Richard Hautman's Mortal Nuts, things seem just swell until Carmen (Speeter's surrogate daughter and sometimes druggie college student) mentions to her ex-convict, Aryan Nation boyfriend that Speeter keeps large sums of cash in his room. This sets off a chain of events that start at the beginning of the fair and lasting the weekend and a half that the fair runs.

Hautman is a master at oddball characters, and there are more than enough of them in Mortal Nuts. It's also fun to see the workings of the Minnesota State Fair-from the food concessions and the freak shows, to the show animals and the rides. It truly is a world unknown to many readers, myself included.

This is my second Peter Hautman, and he continues to grow on me with each book I read.

Absolutely the best combination of comedy and mystery that I have seen in a novel. The characters are like none you will ever read about anywhere else. A+ for Pete Hautman!

Pete Hautman's two leading characters, Axel & Sam, are wonderful. Nuts, to be sure, but so are the rest of the folks in this book. The descriptions of life in the carnival food service business are so rich as to make you want to try out the vocation yourself.

This is a quick, witty read that really IS hard to put down. Highly recommended.

This book is hilarious more for the characters and the situations than the plot itself.
When I got to the part where he describes what goes on at the Minnesota State Fair, my first response was to be in stitches. I then reread it a few times and each time laughed even harder. Then I read it to my wife and daughter and we all just lost it. If you do not think this is funny, just stop reading books. I mean it.

A thoroughly enjoyable book. I think it would make
a great movie. Hollywoord could reunite the "Space
Cowboys" actors - Clint Eastwood, James Garner,
Donald Sutherland - this book seems to be written
for them. If they wanted the whole group, they
could easily write in a character for Tommy
Lee Jones. Betty White would also be perfect
here. Of course, any group of older stars could
make this a very entertaining movie. But, the
book is the thing here, and you can't go wrong
with "The Mortal Nuts".

... why not just ONE honorable character? I found myself cheering for no one - although we were "supposed" to think of him as the good one, Axel was an amoral at least former cheat paying heavily for his beliefs from decades long past. (How could such a supposedly shrewd judge of people miss so badly with the spoiled, stupid, worthless, overall joke-person Carmen?) Sophie was better, but not much. It's a wonder that any of the skinheads even made it to those ages. Tommy seemed a good businessman, but did he have any principles at all? Sam - maybe, but he wanted to keep that $260K - I don't buy that he was "the mortal nuts" to Axel. Perhaps this book influenced Rounders - similar in that way - but here we badly needed a Joey Knish. Still, must admit I'm reading Drawing Dead next.