Customer Reviews

Who Is Teddy Villanova

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Thomas Berger turns the world of hardboiled detective fiction into a twisting, chugging, roller coaster of ludicrous dementia in this first-person account of a hard-luck PI set in NYC in the 1970s. The book is a treat, if for no other reason than to relish the prose of TB. Don't look here if your standard interest is formulaic detective fiction. There's nothing standard or formulaic about Berger's books. You can't label him w/out negating him.

Berger's send-up of the private eye genre. Think of Hammett and Chandler and all the other writers of hard-boiled detective novels and then try to come up with the best way to parody them, and you have this wonderfully crazy book. Berger uses lots of word play: getting around to asking about a dog, a character says "Something's rotten in the state of Dane - I mean Denmark." Tough guys aren't so tough: "I'm not the knave you take me for, sir. The day is not more pure than the depth of my heart," says one, quoting Racine. And the book opens with the line "Call me Russell Wren," as if MOBY DICK was the greatest detective story of them all. Berger's humor, as always, is broadly applied, and the book's a fun read.