Stimes Addisson's Blues
From Plastic Tub
Stimes Addisson's first Dutch Forkes novel, 1970. Dutch gets entangled with an old widow and her son smacks him with a hammer. Shenanigans ensue. A hard-boiled novel to a "T," this first-person account is also tremendously amusing. By no means great, it still manages to elevate the genre.
Highlights are the comic-noir coupling of Forkes' nemesis Dr. Jules Sarkozy and his goon Bumbles Thatchett. Sarkozy, a Dermatologist turned crime lord, exercises his power through various street gangs and pool halls.
Addisson at first considered the work too bloody, but reconsidered. His instincts had clocked onto something, however, because the panned and banned and sent into oblivion soon after its ignomious publication.
Excerpted:
I was about to order my second Manhattan whem a dame walked passed like she was judging the progress of two blimps. My spider senses tingled, my loins fluttered. It was her, the one who'd dropped the denim glove in Spanky's on Christmas Eve....
I watched her through the curtain. She had an ass that wouldn't quit, even though it was underpaid and working overtime.
