Tuesday, 6 September 2011
After spending the first half of Curse of the Missing Puppethead distracted by the disappearance of the device used to deliver the key to 199B Vandam Street to visitors, Kinky Friedman goes one step further in The Prisoner of Vandam Street, confining himself to base for the whole story (on doctor's orders in the novel, but let's speculate about the authorial intention here).
Like the preceding volume it takes a while for the Kinkster to get to a case that needs solving, and this time around he sets things up so that he's not going to be the one doing the solving.
Fictional Friedman is drinking with McGovern when he collapses, the victim of a long dormant dose of malaria, involving Plasmodium falciparum, the "truly deadly" quarter of the four strains of the disease, presumably contracted while on Peace Corps duty in Borneo. It's a serious enough case to have him spending a lengthier spell than he'd have preferred in hospital (invariably spelt horespital) and when he's finally allowed to go home he's confined to barracks for at least six weeks.
It's a situation guaranteed to produce a severe case of cabin fever even if he hadn't been surrounded by supportive Greenwich Village Irregulars who, predictably, set about turning the apartment into the proverbial den of iniquity and drunken debauchery with catering by Pete Myers of Myers of Keswick.
In a rare moment of solitude amid the Irregular party action, Kinkster finds himself looking out the kitchen window through a pair of opera glasses, watching a young woman in an apartment across the street. What starts off as a piece of harmless perving turns ugly when a man appears and brutally attacks her.
As far as the observer is concerned, he's witnessed a crime, but when he calls the cops, but they fail to find find a victim, an apartment or any other witness who has seen or heard anything suspicious.
Predictably, while the Kinkster insists there's been foul play hiss support group, Ratso, McGovern, Brennan, Myers and a VB-swilling Piers Akerman just in from Australia, are convinced it's all the result of a fevered imagination.
As a result, Village Irregular vigilance intensifies, and the Kinkster Irritability Index soars to an all-time high, while the cat embarks on a vicious turd dumping campaign targetting Ratso's back pack and similar paraphernalia.
Kinky sticks to his story and a few days later sights the man again, this time with a gun. He becomes convinced he's witnessing a cycle of domestic violence that will eventually escalate as far as murder.
Fortunately, Hollywood-based licensed private investigator Kent Perkins gives him the benefit of the doubt and arrives on the scene to look into the case. Perkins starts the investigation on the Internet before bringing his full array of resources, including hypotism, to bear as he sets about establishing whether Kinky's claims are real, identify the woman and contact her with reassurances that there is an escape route available should she wish to avail herself of it.
Along the way there are all the elements the Friedman fan has come to expect, though one suspects that Friedman the author is running out of new situations to land his fictional alter ego into, a suspicion that's got a lot to do with the Kinkster-free Kill Two Birds reviewed recently and the fact that he spends about half of Curse of the Missing Puppet Head and this story filling in a back story that has little to do with the actual investigation.
Still, as someone who's been along for the ride for close to twenty years and knows pretty much what lies in store, the prospect of eventually running out of a series long on lesbian dance troupes, grinning puppet heads, gratuitous feline defecation, an abundant supply of alcohol, Cuban cigars and yum cha isn't something I'm looking forward to...
There is (or should that be are?) however, only Ten Little New Yorkers to go.