God Bless John Wayne

If you don't already know Kerrville, Texas humorist, songwriter, detective story composer, observer of America's passing parade, onetime candidate to be governor of the Lone Star State (campaign slogans: "How hard could it be?" and "Why the hell not?"), then there are worse places to begin than by reading his first person narrated detective story GOD BLESS JOHN WAYNE. *** Richard S. "Kinky" Friedman (born 1944 in Chicago) grew up in rural Texas. After taking a 1966 degree in psychology from the University of Texas at Austin, Friedman spent two years with the Peace Corps in Borneo. He has never looked back. A new "Rat Pack" mutual admiration association could be formed around Friedman, Don Imus and Howard Stern. Kinky consistently plays games with and/or tortures the English language in ways less cerebral than did James joyce, but generally funnier. *** Friedman's 1995 detective novel GOD BLESS JOHN WAYNE drags The Duke in by the hair. Two pages before Chapter One, Friedman quotes from his earlier man-of-the-people song, "People Who Read People Magazine" saying "That I am a country picker with a bumpersticker/That says God Bless John Wayne." And toward novel's end fellow detective, dazzling Californian Kent Perkins shows lifelong remorse for not letting his blind John Wayne loving Uncle Rosie run his hands over Kent's showy Rolls-Royce. Next day Uncle Rosie died. What this dash of John Waynesiana has to do with the novel is beyond me. *** GOD BLESS JOHN WAYNE is about a disreputable but kind-hearted, miserly 47 year old friend of Kinky's nicknamed "Ratso." Adopted at birth, Ratso is suddenly keen to find his birth mother. He enlists Kinky. Soon murdered people abound, especially people trying to prevent Kinky, Kent Perkins and a crowd of zanies from finding Ratso's real mom. Along the way, loft-living New Yorker Friedman holds soliloquies with his cat, admires pictures in his loft of Jesus and Mary, longs amorously for a statueque young female neighbor who helps with Ratso's dream; he puffs on a dozen cigars a day, pours down Jameson's whiskey and orchestrates the pursuit of truth about Ratso's antecedents. Ratso hopes that he will prove to be heir to a candy fortune. *** Kinky also returns over and over to Scotsman Robert Louis Stevenson, wondering why the man from Edinburgh ever fled to the South Seas, why the natives loved him so and serving up doses of Stevenson's insights. Relevance to plot? You tell me. *** Friedman the detective shocks with nasty language, occasionally enlightens with insights into American politics and culture and is funny, funny, funny throughout. A hoot to read. -OOO- ***