The Defective Detective

I just finished The Defective Detective, a collection of humorous detective stories, mostly parodies, edited by Steve Carper. Mike received it for Christmas and passed it on to me to read. Unfortunately for me, several of the parodies are of Sherlock Holmes, whom I've always found exceedingly tedious in the original, and the parodies doubly so. Still, I got through the book faster this way, since I skipped them. I expected to like the stories by James Thurber, Woody Allen, Garrison Keillor, Robert Benchley, and P. G. Wodehouse. But I didn't. S.J Perelman, Fran Leibowitz, Bob & Ray, those should be funny, right? Eh.

However, the entire book is redeemed by one story: "The Big Recall" by Henry Beard, published in National Lampoon, with Ralph Nader as the detective! Is it a Chandler parody or pastiche? How can you tell? Never mind, it's great. He's got all the Chandleresque extended metaphors down pat, and mixes in a goodly amount of popular (at the time) culture. Here are some lines that made me giggle as the commercials they reference flashed back into my oh-so-impressionable brain.

"It was six-thirty on a Monday, and the late autumn sun was going through its daily dramatization outside my fifth-story window, sinking through the murky Washington air like that pearl in the bottle of Prell."

"...I was pretty sure it wasn't the Avon Lady come to sell me $4 worth of scented skin irritant in a bottle shaped like a shoe."

"The night man was pushing a mop around, but no plastic frisbee appeared to carry me over the floor, so I guessed he wasn't using Aerowax."

I couldn't have told you the name of that floor wax, but the image of a frisbee whisking people over the floor is indelibly burnt into my brain. And I think I had that Avon bottle, or else my mom did!

I also particularly liked:

"When Congress is in session, the shyster lawyers, and the two-bit lobbyists, and the influence peddlers work late hours crawling all over bills, nibbling away at clauses and leaving little amendments."

This is book #1 of 2008. I've decided to count this year. I wonder, does reading cookbooks count? If so, book #2 is Paula Wolfert's Slow Mediterranean Kitchen.