Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover (Kinky Friedman Novels) (Paperback)

~ (Author) "IT WAS NEW YEAR'S DAY..." (more)
Key Phrases: rocket beans, little black puppet head, power nap, Leaning Jesus, Polly Price, Derrick Price (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Texas musician Friedman writes mysteries the way he sings -- lots of humming, head-scratching and general fooling around. There are always plenty of cigars and an inevitable cat. But his loyal fans lap up his books and will certainly welcome this newest addition. The Kinkster's boozy reporter (is there any another kind in mystery fiction?) friend McGovern is being plagued by FBI agents disguised as aliens, so Friedman sets off on a journey of discovery to Washington and Al Capone's old Chicago haunts. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Gonzo crime writer and former country singer Friedman's rambling ninth book (God Bless John Wayne) featuring ornery, cigar-munching, amateur sleuth Kinky Friedman brims with political paranoia and male bonding. The Kinkster is rescued from melancholia when mysterious, slinky Polly Price visits his West Village loft in Manhattan and, "rising out of the fog like a pirate ship," hires him to locate her missing husband, a well-heeled New York lawyer. While sorting through the man's legal and financial affairs, Kinky is sidetracked by his distressed buddy Michael McGovern (a member of Kinky's entourage, The Village Irregulars), who claims he's being shadowed by government agents. McGovern also says he's getting calls from a long-deceased man named Leaning Jesus who used to be Al Capone's chef and may or may not have left McGovern clues to the mobster's buried treasure. The lawyer quest leads Kinky into a sequence of deadly setups (he is framed with a suitcase full of cocaine, shot in the arm by the police and trapped in a flaming limousine in Chicago) before he begins to realize that that case was a pretext meant to prevent him from rescuing McGovern from an FBI sting. Distracting digressions, wacky nostalgia trips, remarkably bad puns and Kinky's miasmic self-absorption blur the finer points of the story line. But by his own admission, the Kinkster is a hapless gum-shoe, relying on Sherlock Holmes stories and sleuthing mentor, Rambam, to unravel a case that's built on plenty of unlikely twists and revelations. 100,000 first printing; QPB alternate; author tour.
Copyright 1996 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: 240 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (August 26, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345415094
• ISBN-13: 978-0345415097
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #840,754 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars One-Note 'Love Song', February 24, 2002

By	William Peschel (Hershey, PA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

You can tell that the title of Kinky Friedman's ninth novel, "The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover," hints at an educated author who is also a humorist with a flair for the politically incorrect. The title is a take-off of T.S. Eliot's poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," and the story was written by the man who fronted a band called the Texas Jewboys and penned country songs like "Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed" and "They Ain't Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore" (which is not as offensive a song as you'd think.) Obviously, Kinky Friedman is a man who is not afraid to offend. You have been warned.

Friedman's novels are the most unconventional in detective fiction. His hero is a carbon copy of himself who becomes an amateur detective after saving a woman's life during a robbery attempt at an ATM. He lives with his cat in a badly heated warehouse loft on 199B Vandam St., New York City, and surrounds himself with an unconventional set of friends like journalist Michael McGovern, who has both a drink and a chicken dish named for him, Ratso, who sometimes wears a coonskin cap complete with head and Rambam, a mercenary "wanted in states whose names begin with an I."

They're an eccentric group of friends, so when McGovern says he's seeing little green men and receives threatening phone calls from an old friend named Leaning Jesus, it's understandable why Friedman wants to avoid him, especially since he has been hired by a beautiful woman to find her missing husband. The case becomes troublesome after Friedman is caught in a narcotics raid in D.C. and a flaming limo in Chicago. His sleuthing uncovers a clue that McGovern's troubles might be connected to the missing husband.

This is not the best book in the series. Friedman seems to be going through the motions here. While first-time readers will be either enchanted or repelled by Friedman's stream-of-consciousness prose and wicked, frequently scatological wit, regular readers will sense a flagging of energy. Friedman's plots are usually simple frameworks on which he hangs his jokes, but here it becomes annoying that the story doesn't begin moving until halfway through the book. Too little is too much this time; this is one love song that strikes a sour note.

If you're still interesting in sampling Kinky's work, I would suggest his Hank Williams Jr. tribute "A Case of Lone Star," or his more recent "Roadkill," featuring Willie Nelson.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Amusing, Offebeat, Politically Incorrect and Entertaining, September 27, 2000

By	J. Mullin (Plantation, FL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

...I stumbled across this book on a bargain rack, and it was also my first experience reading the "Kinkster". However, I must confess that I found this novel to be well worth the couple of bucks I paid for it, and well worth my time in reading it (although it surely won't take very long, Friedman's books are a very quick and painless read).

Friedman's writing style is infectious- you either like it right from the start, or it's not for you. Virtually every page has a wisecrack and witty retort, and the author throws in references to such diverse characters as Charles Dickens, Tom Bodet (of Motel 6 fame), Martin Luther King, J. Edgar Hoover and mass murderer John Wayne Gacy. No topic is off-limits. The narrator lives in a 4th floor apartment in NYC, and a lesbian dance instructor lives over him. He mentions, as he goes through the papers of a missing man, that one check stood out "like a Jew with an antfarm." Friedman pokes fun of everyone, but in a playful and witty manner that I really enjoyed.

The novel's main storyline revolved around a missing person, the husband of Kinky's client, as well as a secondary theme involving suspicious characters that seem to be following Kinky's Irish journalist friend McGovern. I am unfamiliar with the author's prior works, but I understand that many of his usual cast of characters are here, as well as the habits and style that have made his loyal fans look forward to Friedman's annual novel.

I should add a word or two about the rating, since I gave the book 4 stars yet I certainly don't think Friedman is a better novelist than say John Irving or Howard Norman, whose books I have given 3 stars. I think you have to judge a book like this in the context of his genre, and for those looking for a witty mystery novel with an occasional unexpected plot twist, interspersed with humor and biting sarcasm, I think this book ranks up there with similar novels by Carl Hiassen.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Exercise in Controlled Hilarity, September 21, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The LOVE SONG OF J EDGAR HOOVER (Kinky Friedman Novels) (Hardcover)

Richard "Kinky" Friedman, irreverent country singer turned irreverent mystery author, is back in action with his ninth novel, "The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover." First-time readers of the Kinkster - who practiced political incorrectness long before anyone bothered coining the phrase - will no doubt be jarred by the author's quick, scatalogical wit. Regular readers will be pleased to find each of the Village Irregulars in attendance, to assist their leader in a case involving pal McGovern, the FBI and a mysterious character known only as Leaning Jesus. The novel proceeds at a breakneck pace, with the author happily skewering everything in his path. An exercise in controlled hilarity, this book is worth the manic trip