[.ca] Spanking Watson (ISBN 0671047426)

From Amazon.com:
The same bizarre mixture of ingredients that has turned Kinky Friedman from a country musician into a popular mystery writer and hero of his own series continues in this exercise oddity, which, true to form, seems to contain something to offend virtually everyone. "If you spend a little time with lesbians and nuns, you begin to see the effect love or the absence of it can have on a human life," muses the Kinkster at one point. This comes after a campaign by Friedman to terrorize his upstairs neighbor, Winnie Katz, whose lesbian dance classes have caused the ceiling of his Greenwich Village loft to collapse. But Kinky's amateur terrorism pales by comparison to the mysterious person who wants to do some real damage to Winnie, so Friedman and his Village Irregulars turn from aggressors to protectors. Surrounded by Italian gangsters with names like Linguini and Gepetto, they plan a weird revenge scheme that involves such horrors as chainsaws and Friedman in a red wig. The title--usually the best thing about a Kinkster book--has to do with which particular member of his motley crew will be officially chosen to play Watson to his Sherlock. But even here there are no clear answers: as Friedman says, "President Clinton is Watson. The Chinese dwarf who paints pastels on Mott Street is Watson. The world is Watson. Only Sherlock Holmes stands achingly alone on the weather-beaten, worm-eaten cross of rational thought. Sherlock Holmes, you see, is the thinking man's Jesus Christ." --Dick Adler

You Never Marry the First Person You Watch Casablanca With:
"Spanking Watson" is Kinky's eleventh book, and was first published in 1999. As with his other books, Kinky has cast himself as the amateur-PI hero, while some of the other characters have been based on actual friends. As with real-life, the book's Kinky is a cigar-smoking, cat-loving, espresso-guzzling, whiskey-drinking, ex-country and western performer. He shares his loft on Vandam Street with his cat - who he occasionally leaves in charge. Conversations between Kinky and the cat tend to be somewhat one-sided, while the cat consistently refuses to answer the telephone. Winnie Katz still lives upstairs, and continues to run her lesbian dance classes. While this has never caused Kinky any serious problem before, it's been the cause of a slight inconvenience now : the constant pounding on Winnie's floor has left a rather large hole in the Kinkster's roof. Rambam, a genuine PI and Village Irregular, has arranged for two repairmen to help out - Vinnie and Gepetto, known "associates" of Joe the Hyena. Kinky had received his espresso machine several years earlier from Joe, a token of thanks for rescuing his daughter from a mugger. Vinnie and Gepetto, admiring the machine, tell Kinky there's only one problem : Joe doesn't have a daughter. Obviously, Kinky's curious - but Joe is, of course, the sort of Italian "businessman" you don't get curious about. On a lonely Friday night, in an anger encouraged by several generous helpings of Jameson's Whiskey, Kinky writes a series of threatening letters to Winnie - never, of course,with any intention of delivering them, never mind acting on them. When Ratso catches sight of them the next day, Kinky decides to put them to good use. He would provide each of the Village Irregulars with a copy of a note, and ask for their help - while asking them to keep their investigations secret from the other members of the gang. The Irregular who successfully solved the "case" would officially become "Watson" to Kinky's "Sherlock". Of course, this plan would have the added bonus of disrupting not only Winnie's life but also her dance classes. "Spanking Watson" has much in common with the other books by Kinky I've read. Not an entirely serious 'whodunit', it is a fast moving and easily read book. The story, I felt, is much better than his earlier books, and he still delivers his one-liners. While his quips won't be to everyone's tastes, it was a book I thoroughly enjoyed.

Not one of Kinky's best:
I approach anything written by Kinky Friedman with some caution. His prose, while addictive, may also be mind-altering. After all, anyone who goes to the bathroom after a big meal and takes a Nixon can't be all bad. The problem with this novel, however, is that the Kinkstah was repeating himself. Yeah, we know he has a good looking neighbor for whom he lusts. Yeah, we know he has a lesbian dance class in the apartment above his. Yeah, we know that a cigar half-smoked and then placed in his vest to age gets gamier, and we even know how he went about lighting it, because every time he lights up, he tells us exactly how it's done. Which doesn't take anything away from him. Kinky's novels are always entertaining and readable, often ribald, and rarely dull. Except for 'Spanking Watson'. I had to push myself to finish it. I didn't care about Kinky's ceiling, or the fact that his ethnic handymen talked him into a fireplace. I didn't really care that his upstairs neighbor was in jeopardy, which she really wasn't--at least, not at first--because Kinky had written the threatening note after downing too many Jameson's. Would I recommend the novel to a friend? Sure, providing he or she was a committed Kinky fan. For a new reader, however, this novel would not be a good place to start. There are lots of places in 'Spanking Watson' where it's too easy to put the book down and not pick it up again. Would I buy the next Kinky novel? Of course I would because I'm a committed fan. I just hope that our amateur sleuth gets back to the kind of amusing capers we've seen in his earlier works.

Kinky, Roll baby Roll!:
I started reading the Kinkster's works here and found it quite amusing with the little sub stories running amuck. If your looking for a way to kill a few hours of your life in a pointless, yet amusing way, pick up this book... or any of Friedman's books. The one thing I learned from this book, no self respecting Italian would ever use a metal bat...

If you have to ask . . .:
Okay, I'll make this easy for you. This is KINKY FRIEDMAN. Now, that either makes you start chuckling, or it doesn't. As the man said: "If you have to ask, then don't bother."

Crude, politically incorrect... great for the easily-amused:
I couldn't help but buy this book. After all, my friend had been raving about Kinky Friedman for ages. So I quickly snatched it up and ran home to tell him about my purchase. "Which one did you get?" he asked in a prompt email response. "I don't remember. It's something about dancing lesbians," I replied. "They're all about dancing lesbians," he told me. So there you have it. Kinky Friedman in a nutshell. He's a "Texas Jewboy" transplanted in New York, where he lives with a humorless cat in a loft that's conveniently located one floor beneath Winnie Katz's lesbian dance school. And he spends his time smoking cigars, doing shots of whatever's available, and investigating the occasional case. In Spanking Watson, the Kinkster actually creates his own case. After his ceiling collapses (thanks to Winnie Katz and her dancing lesbians), Kinky writes a death threat to his neighbor in a drunken stupor. He didn't mean to send it, of course, but before he gets the chance to dispose of it properly, his friend Ratso finds it. When Kinky covers it up as a piece of evidence in a new case that he's investigating, Ratso insists that, as Kinky's Dr. Watson, he should see the note. Ratso's statement gives Kinky an idea. Out of all of the members in his little circle of friends (which he calls The Village Irregulars), he wonders which of them really makes the best Watson. So he devises a little contest -- with a little bit of revenge thrown in on the side. He tells his friends that the note was written to Winnie Katz. The dance instructor is too freaked out to talk about it, though, he tells each of his Watsons, so it's their job to investigate the case -- to make pests of themselves if necessary -- in order to figure out who's out to get poor Winnie. Kinky's fake case turns a little more serious, however, when someone breaks into Winnie's apartment and threatens to kill her. Suddenly, there's more to Kinky's case than just determining which of his friends should be his real Watson. Kinky Friedman definitely isn't for everyone. He's pretty crude and politically-incorrect, and he often seems to be rambling about absolutely nothing (not to mention the fact that he's constantly talking to his cat). But if you're one of those people who tend to be random and easily-amused (like me), then Spanking Watson will keep you laughing from beginning to end.