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Kinky Friedman #2
A Case Of Lone Star
The second of the mysteries featuring the foul-mouthed Kinky Friedman, ace private eye. It is Thanksgiving at the legendary Lone Star Cafe, a raucus little corner of Texas right in the middle of Manhattan. Larry Barkins is found dead in his dressing room, his head bashed in with his own guitar.
189 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 1987
13 people are currently reading
168 people want to read
About the author
Kinky Friedman
69 books289 followersRichard S. "Kinky" Friedman is an American singer, songwriter, novelist, humorist, politician and former columnist for Texas Monthly who styles himself in the mold of popular American satirists Will Rogers and Mark Twain. He was one of two independent candidates in the 2006 election for the office of Governor of Texas. Receiving 12.6% of the vote, Friedman placed fourth in the six-person race.
Friedman was born in Chicago to Jewish parents, Dr. S. Thomas Friedman and his wife Minnie (Samet) Friedman. The family moved to a ranch in central Texas a few years later. Friedman had an early interest in both music and chess, and was chosen at age 7 as one of 50 local players to challenge U.S. grandmaster Samuel Reshevsky to simultaneous matches in Houston. Reshevsky won all 50 matches, but Friedman was by far the youngest competitor.
Friedman graduated from Austin High School in Austin, Texas in 1962 and earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Texas at Austin in 1966, majoring in Psychology. He took part in the Plan II Honors program and was a member of the Tau Delta Phi fraternity. During his freshman year, Chinga Chavin gave Friedman the nickname "Kinky" because of his curly hair.
Friedman served two years in the United States Peace Corps, teaching on Borneo in Malaysia with John Gross. During his service in the Peace Corps, he met future Texas Jewboy road manager Dylan Ferrero, with whom he still works today. Friedman lives at Echo Hill Ranch, his family's summer camp near Kerrville, Texas. He founded Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch, also located near Kerrville, whose mission is to care for stray, abused and aging animals; more than 1,000 dogs have been saved from animal euthanasia.
Series:
* Kinky Friedman Mystery
Friedman was born in Chicago to Jewish parents, Dr. S. Thomas Friedman and his wife Minnie (Samet) Friedman. The family moved to a ranch in central Texas a few years later. Friedman had an early interest in both music and chess, and was chosen at age 7 as one of 50 local players to challenge U.S. grandmaster Samuel Reshevsky to simultaneous matches in Houston. Reshevsky won all 50 matches, but Friedman was by far the youngest competitor.
Friedman graduated from Austin High School in Austin, Texas in 1962 and earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Texas at Austin in 1966, majoring in Psychology. He took part in the Plan II Honors program and was a member of the Tau Delta Phi fraternity. During his freshman year, Chinga Chavin gave Friedman the nickname "Kinky" because of his curly hair.
Friedman served two years in the United States Peace Corps, teaching on Borneo in Malaysia with John Gross. During his service in the Peace Corps, he met future Texas Jewboy road manager Dylan Ferrero, with whom he still works today. Friedman lives at Echo Hill Ranch, his family's summer camp near Kerrville, Texas. He founded Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch, also located near Kerrville, whose mission is to care for stray, abused and aging animals; more than 1,000 dogs have been saved from animal euthanasia.
Series:
* Kinky Friedman Mystery
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews
January 11, 2021
CRITIQUE:
Write 'em, Jewboy
I started reading this novel just before the Trump Insurrection (the bonfire of Trump's vanity, as if we needed yet another one), and at first it was hard to make much headway, with all the distraction. But then it seemed that a bit of the Kinkster was just what I needed. He sure knows how to write with pertinence and humour. Maybe he was what we all needed. A writer/musician whose guitar (not to mention his books), in the words of Woody Guthrie, kills fascists.
As at the end of the twentieth century (he wrote this novel in 1987), Kinky was (he's still alive, at the time of writing) a true, alternative Jewish Renaissance Man. He's a country music singer, song-writer, guitarist, comic, journalist, novelist, and, in the guise of his first person narrator, an amateur private detective (his friend, Ratso, calls him Sherlock). Then in the first decade of this century, he made a creditable run for governor of Texas, describing himself as a Texas Jewboy, who would make a kinky governor. Not all candidates are so frank about their ambitions.
His campaign slogan declared:
"Kinky's...for the little fellers, not the Rockefellers." [Online, the slogan is attributed to Senator Paul Wellstone.]
Though, while fearing for his life in the novel, he quotes the words of Thomas Paine: "I care not who makes a country's laws, if I can write her songs." To which his friend, the journalist McGovern, responds, "You may write the songs, but I write the obituaries."
Eastern, Country and Western
Most of the action in the novel occurs in New York, rather than Texas or Nashville. Some crazed fan of Hank Williams has started to kill performers at the Lone Star Cafe, and Kinky is enlisted by the owner to put a halt to the murders, at which point he becomes a target. He also agrees to perform at the Lone Star Cafe, so he can catch the killer red-handed, or before his hands are reddened with Kinky's blood.
"Anything can happen in New York. Right or wrong, Kinkster? You're the perfect guy to make New York City safe for country music...Do it for God and country music."
Substitute Washington DC for New York, and you get an insurrection. Even if, in New York, "I keep looking at these damn people outside the window...They look like discarded lines from old Bob Dylan songs." In comparison, Trump's supporters looked like absconders from a dental convention, or music fans who were too old for John Cougar Mellencamp and too young for the Beach Boys.
Kinky's 1980's New York isn't the cosmopolitan city it claims to be:
"It's almost as hard to get good Mexican food in New York as it is in Mexico."
Things are different in Texas. It's the home of rednecks and Proud Boys (and SXSW).
"Back in Texas it was hunting season. A good time to buy your mother-in-law a fur coat with antlers."
"I put on my cowboy hat and my hunting vest with the little rows of stitched pockets where some Americans keep their shotgun shells."
[Jake Angeli, AKA QAnon Shaman]
Once in a while, you get to storm the Capitol in your fur coat and horns, if you're lucky.
"What great sport to be a hunter. Kill things more beautiful than you. Shoot birds that flew higher than your dreams. Kill many buffalo. Once in a while you clean your gun and accidentally blow your head off. Good."
Hank Williams Nuts
Almost everybody in the novel is a Hank Williams nut. He's more or less the patron saint of the novel. His real life biographer, Rolling Stone journalist, Chet Flippo, plays a significant role in the novel.
Kinky says of the biography, "Your Cheatin' Heart":
"The thing that makes it work is that it contains thoughts, incidents, scenes, emotions that only Hank Williams himself could have known."
It's a line he's borrowed from a review somewhere. He uses it twice in the novel.
The Lone Star Cafe, corner of Fifth Avenue and 13th Street, New York City, complete with 40 foot roof iguana by Bob "Daddy-O" Wade [Under the top banner is a sign saying, "Too Much Ain't Enough"]
Source: http://metroray.blogspot.com/2013/04/...
For more pics and history, see also: http://rightherenyc.blogspot.com/2011...
Economy of $2 Words
Kinky also admires the fact that Chet Flippo uses no "$20 words". Kinky's writing is the same. He's a man of few words, most of them short. The longest is probably "pertinent".
When it comes to women, "I employed an economy of words. Women go for the strong, silent type. Except in rare cases where they prefer the highly verbal, indecisive type. I could be either. Sometimes, in extreme situations I would rapidly alternate the two personas in case the woman liked a guy who was confused about his identity."
Kinky has two girlfriends, Uptown Judy and Downtown Judy (one for each persona?), neither of whom is aware of the other's existence, and who narrowly miss each other during visiting hours.
Kinky Obsessions
Hank Williams isn't the only subject of obsession in the novel. Kinky is obsessed with shots of Jameson Irish Whiskey, Bass ale chasers, sambuca, coffee beans, cigars (purchased from Village Cigars), and Nudie Suits ("I put on my Nudie's of Hollywood Jesus coat that Bob Dylan had given me").
His friend, Ratso, has ten thousand books relating to Jesus, Bob Dylan and Hitler. You wonder whether he was a colleague of Murray Jay Siskind from Don DeLillo's "White Noise". (There's a bald-headed, coke dealing lawyer named Murray Fiskind in Kinky's novel. "Not that all lawyers are crooks." I'd like to see somebody prove that beyond reasonable doubt.)
If you're wondering what will help you get through until the end of the inauguration and the next hundred days, you might enjoy some of the legendary mysterious loud mouth honkytonk rock singer cowboy that is Kinky Friedman. But be prepared to come out the other side with some new obsessions besides Donald Trump, QAnon, Twitter and the second amendment. If nothing else, do it for God and country music.
Source: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty
"I wanted Bernie to win [the 2016 presidential election], because that would have been the first time in history that a Jewish family moved into a house that a black family moved out of."
Source: http://culturemyth.net/blog/2017/5/4/...
SOUNDTRACK:
Write 'em, Jewboy
I started reading this novel just before the Trump Insurrection (the bonfire of Trump's vanity, as if we needed yet another one), and at first it was hard to make much headway, with all the distraction. But then it seemed that a bit of the Kinkster was just what I needed. He sure knows how to write with pertinence and humour. Maybe he was what we all needed. A writer/musician whose guitar (not to mention his books), in the words of Woody Guthrie, kills fascists.
As at the end of the twentieth century (he wrote this novel in 1987), Kinky was (he's still alive, at the time of writing) a true, alternative Jewish Renaissance Man. He's a country music singer, song-writer, guitarist, comic, journalist, novelist, and, in the guise of his first person narrator, an amateur private detective (his friend, Ratso, calls him Sherlock). Then in the first decade of this century, he made a creditable run for governor of Texas, describing himself as a Texas Jewboy, who would make a kinky governor. Not all candidates are so frank about their ambitions.
His campaign slogan declared:
"Kinky's...for the little fellers, not the Rockefellers." [Online, the slogan is attributed to Senator Paul Wellstone.]
Though, while fearing for his life in the novel, he quotes the words of Thomas Paine: "I care not who makes a country's laws, if I can write her songs." To which his friend, the journalist McGovern, responds, "You may write the songs, but I write the obituaries."
Eastern, Country and Western
Most of the action in the novel occurs in New York, rather than Texas or Nashville. Some crazed fan of Hank Williams has started to kill performers at the Lone Star Cafe, and Kinky is enlisted by the owner to put a halt to the murders, at which point he becomes a target. He also agrees to perform at the Lone Star Cafe, so he can catch the killer red-handed, or before his hands are reddened with Kinky's blood.
"Anything can happen in New York. Right or wrong, Kinkster? You're the perfect guy to make New York City safe for country music...Do it for God and country music."
Substitute Washington DC for New York, and you get an insurrection. Even if, in New York, "I keep looking at these damn people outside the window...They look like discarded lines from old Bob Dylan songs." In comparison, Trump's supporters looked like absconders from a dental convention, or music fans who were too old for John Cougar Mellencamp and too young for the Beach Boys.
Kinky's 1980's New York isn't the cosmopolitan city it claims to be:
"It's almost as hard to get good Mexican food in New York as it is in Mexico."
Things are different in Texas. It's the home of rednecks and Proud Boys (and SXSW).
"Back in Texas it was hunting season. A good time to buy your mother-in-law a fur coat with antlers."
"I put on my cowboy hat and my hunting vest with the little rows of stitched pockets where some Americans keep their shotgun shells."
[Jake Angeli, AKA QAnon Shaman]
Once in a while, you get to storm the Capitol in your fur coat and horns, if you're lucky.
"What great sport to be a hunter. Kill things more beautiful than you. Shoot birds that flew higher than your dreams. Kill many buffalo. Once in a while you clean your gun and accidentally blow your head off. Good."
Hank Williams Nuts
Almost everybody in the novel is a Hank Williams nut. He's more or less the patron saint of the novel. His real life biographer, Rolling Stone journalist, Chet Flippo, plays a significant role in the novel.
Kinky says of the biography, "Your Cheatin' Heart":
"The thing that makes it work is that it contains thoughts, incidents, scenes, emotions that only Hank Williams himself could have known."
It's a line he's borrowed from a review somewhere. He uses it twice in the novel.
The Lone Star Cafe, corner of Fifth Avenue and 13th Street, New York City, complete with 40 foot roof iguana by Bob "Daddy-O" Wade [Under the top banner is a sign saying, "Too Much Ain't Enough"]
Source: http://metroray.blogspot.com/2013/04/...
For more pics and history, see also: http://rightherenyc.blogspot.com/2011...
Economy of $2 Words
Kinky also admires the fact that Chet Flippo uses no "$20 words". Kinky's writing is the same. He's a man of few words, most of them short. The longest is probably "pertinent".
When it comes to women, "I employed an economy of words. Women go for the strong, silent type. Except in rare cases where they prefer the highly verbal, indecisive type. I could be either. Sometimes, in extreme situations I would rapidly alternate the two personas in case the woman liked a guy who was confused about his identity."
Kinky has two girlfriends, Uptown Judy and Downtown Judy (one for each persona?), neither of whom is aware of the other's existence, and who narrowly miss each other during visiting hours.
Kinky Obsessions
Hank Williams isn't the only subject of obsession in the novel. Kinky is obsessed with shots of Jameson Irish Whiskey, Bass ale chasers, sambuca, coffee beans, cigars (purchased from Village Cigars), and Nudie Suits ("I put on my Nudie's of Hollywood Jesus coat that Bob Dylan had given me").
His friend, Ratso, has ten thousand books relating to Jesus, Bob Dylan and Hitler. You wonder whether he was a colleague of Murray Jay Siskind from Don DeLillo's "White Noise". (There's a bald-headed, coke dealing lawyer named Murray Fiskind in Kinky's novel. "Not that all lawyers are crooks." I'd like to see somebody prove that beyond reasonable doubt.)
If you're wondering what will help you get through until the end of the inauguration and the next hundred days, you might enjoy some of the legendary mysterious loud mouth honkytonk rock singer cowboy that is Kinky Friedman. But be prepared to come out the other side with some new obsessions besides Donald Trump, QAnon, Twitter and the second amendment. If nothing else, do it for God and country music.
Source: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty
"I wanted Bernie to win [the 2016 presidential election], because that would have been the first time in history that a Jewish family moved into a house that a black family moved out of."
Source: http://culturemyth.net/blog/2017/5/4/...
SOUNDTRACK:
August 1, 2020
Steht als Bestandteil der Mitbewohner-Bibliothek schon immer bei uns im Regal und gehört zu des Herrn Mitbewohners Geschichte - jetzt wollte ich's doch mal wissen. Nachdem ich die ersten Kapitel lang schwankte, ob ich die übertriebene Hard-boiled-Attitüde der Erzählstimme albern fand oder nicht, erkannte ich, dass die Stimme sie ja selbst albern fand und mochte sie. Die Krimihandlung im New Yorker Countrymusik-Millieu der 1980er selbst ist nicht unbedingt fesselnd, doch es sind die ständigen schrägen Ausreißer aus all den Klischees, die das Buch zur vergnüglichen Lektüre machten - seien es die Metaphern, die unerwartet auf jüdische Kultur referenzieren (Herr Friedman ist ja vor allem Musiker, mit Country-Hits wie "They Ain't Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore"), seien es Floskeln, die der Erzähler ganz anders verwendet als gewohnt.
May 2, 2012
Preposterous murder mystery is solved by an even more preposterous sleuth. Wisecracking, cigar-addicted country-western singer Kinky beds Uptown Judy and Downtown Judy (striving to keep them mutually ignorant of one another's existence), swigs his Jameson whiskeys and Lone Star beers while trying to discover which of his Hank Williams-obsessed acquaintances is murdering country-western musicians in a Greenwich Village club. Some funny lines, the best repartee being between Kinky and his very urban, un-country pal Ratso, and I liked revisiting the scenes of grungy nightlife in the '80s in New York. But the set-up is the joke, a Jewish Texas singer mouthing off while playing Sam Spade, and I don't think I want to hear it again. 030903
June 9, 2016
Great book. Kinky is so irreverent and funny with an entertaining murder mystery thrown in as well. This was his second novel in his mystery "series". And although I've been reading them haphazard and out of order, I still found this one very entertaining.
September 12, 2024
Nobody makes me laugh like Kinky. If you’re ever down he will pull you up. I love him so much.
January 29, 2026
If you've read one before, then you know what you're going to get when you pick up a Kinky Friedman novel and if you like that sort of thing (convoluted whodunnit wrapped in wry one liners and meta-humor) then you'll like this book.
March 18, 2016
It was 11.40. I lit a cigar, took a slug of Jameson's, and the phones rang.
That's about it, really. The narrator/protagonist is a bit of a one-trick pony. Wants to tell me everything that goes in his mouth - every meal, every drink, every cigar. Freud would have something to say about this, I'm sure.
That's about it, really. The narrator/protagonist is a bit of a one-trick pony. Wants to tell me everything that goes in his mouth - every meal, every drink, every cigar. Freud would have something to say about this, I'm sure.
June 16, 2016
This is the second in a series of novels by Kinky Friedman with the main character being the amateur detective Kinky Friedman. It is a modern day, derivative Sherlock Holmes, if Sherlock Holmes were a Jewish former country and western singer living in Manhattan.
July 5, 2012
Own First Edition signed copy
December 25, 2017
Awesome
Think I will buy more Kinky books. What a sense of humor. He is in charge of the English language.
Think I will buy more Kinky books. What a sense of humor. He is in charge of the English language.
March 12, 2018
I read this book years ago, but I just read it again - I love all the Kinky Friedman books!!!!
February 3, 2022
I accidentally got introduced to Kinky Friedman while shopping in a bookstore in Austin, Texas early 1990's. Just picked up one of the middle books; mainly because the cover had a photo of a black cat and she looked like she was in control. Go forward some twenty years later and I'm still a fan and now I've decided to start reading Kinky's books in order. So now, I'm at number 2. All of his mysteries are hilarious and quite often politically incorrect which is why they are so enjoyable.
I found this one to be nostalgic in addition to a being fun read. For me it was like revisiting the club nightlife in 1980's New York but focusing on the activity at the Lone Star music club and the country music scene.
There's lots of information about Hank Williams, his life, lyrics, and his death. Kinky also throws in other information about other musicians such as Bob Dylan and biographer Chet Flippo who actually wrote for the Rolling Stones and penned a biography of Hank Williams Sr.
Kinky's books are sometimes a case of the truth being stranger than fiction, so I discovered that there truly was a Lone Star Cafe in NYC located at 61 5th Ave on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 13th Street and indeed it did have a 40 foot Iguana named "Iggy" on the roof. Really, believe it or not.
This Cafe hosted many musical acts from Texas like : Greezy Wheels, Asleep at the Wheel, Roy Orbinson, Willie Nelson, Delbert McClinton, Freddy Fender, Jerry Jeff Walker, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Lost Gonzo Band, Hot Tuna and Kinky Friedman. Wow!
Even more amazing and fun, two of the founders of the Lone Star actually appear in the book: Mort Cooperman who is the cop and Bill Dick who is the owner of Lone Star in the book.
On the way to solving the crime, we get exposed to Kinky's obsessions : Jameson Whiskey, Cuban Cigars, dim sum, Mexican food, sambuca, coffee beans, cats and women. We also get to meet the Village Irregulars a group of rag tag friends (who are also Kinky's friends in real life) Ratso,
Rambam, McGovern, Brennan, Tom Baker, Chinga Chavez, Winnie Katz, Uptown Judy and Downtown Judy.
In conclusion, Kinky always delivers fun lines, irreverent observations with some philosophical discussions to entertain and amuse the reader. Lot's of laughs and great characters.
Thank you Kinky.
I found this one to be nostalgic in addition to a being fun read. For me it was like revisiting the club nightlife in 1980's New York but focusing on the activity at the Lone Star music club and the country music scene.
There's lots of information about Hank Williams, his life, lyrics, and his death. Kinky also throws in other information about other musicians such as Bob Dylan and biographer Chet Flippo who actually wrote for the Rolling Stones and penned a biography of Hank Williams Sr.
Kinky's books are sometimes a case of the truth being stranger than fiction, so I discovered that there truly was a Lone Star Cafe in NYC located at 61 5th Ave on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 13th Street and indeed it did have a 40 foot Iguana named "Iggy" on the roof. Really, believe it or not.
This Cafe hosted many musical acts from Texas like : Greezy Wheels, Asleep at the Wheel, Roy Orbinson, Willie Nelson, Delbert McClinton, Freddy Fender, Jerry Jeff Walker, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Lost Gonzo Band, Hot Tuna and Kinky Friedman. Wow!
Even more amazing and fun, two of the founders of the Lone Star actually appear in the book: Mort Cooperman who is the cop and Bill Dick who is the owner of Lone Star in the book.
On the way to solving the crime, we get exposed to Kinky's obsessions : Jameson Whiskey, Cuban Cigars, dim sum, Mexican food, sambuca, coffee beans, cats and women. We also get to meet the Village Irregulars a group of rag tag friends (who are also Kinky's friends in real life) Ratso,
Rambam, McGovern, Brennan, Tom Baker, Chinga Chavez, Winnie Katz, Uptown Judy and Downtown Judy.
In conclusion, Kinky always delivers fun lines, irreverent observations with some philosophical discussions to entertain and amuse the reader. Lot's of laughs and great characters.
Thank you Kinky.
January 10, 2021
I read this book in the old fiction reading room at the back of the main branch of the Detroit Public Library in 1992 while waiting for my wife to get out of class for the day at Wayne State University, the campus of which is across Cass Avenue from the back of the library. I used to have a habit of simply walking through the stacks and grabbing the first three or four books that caught my eye, based solely on the cover art & title, which would then be what I read that day. Amazingly, that method actually worked pretty well, and I found several good books I might otherwise have missed (the best was almost certainly Harold Nebenzal's extraordinary first novel, Cafe Berlin). It was definitely the cover art in this case; that iguana is pretty damned cool, although the title is pretty good too. I knew who Mr. Friedman was, of course- his "underground hit" 'Asshole From El Paso' was hugely popular in the sort of stoner/cowboy milieu of the area around my mother's hometown of Delta, Colorado. His music fit right in with the Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash and such which was always in heavy rotation all over Colorado's western slope, and we used to go out there to visit every year during the 1970s & 1980s. That sort of music always reminds me of riding around in an old pickup truck with a loaded pistol in the glove-box and a carpet of empty tallboys on the floor. This book is not a masterpiece like Nebenzal's, but it wasn't really meant to be; as amusing, satirical genre fiction it works quite well. I never did get around to reading any of Kinky Friedman's other books, which I'll have to rectify one of these days...
July 7, 2024
This is the fourth Kinky Friedman novel I've read since Kinky passed to the great country bar in sky. This was the first one I read a long, long time ago. And I think it isn't quite as good as what follows. The writing is fine, but hasn't taken off yet.
Its a fairly standard detective plot with an interesting setting, but this one has less of the imaginative joy that will follow. Perhaps I've just read this one too much.
Anyway it is fun, but there are better Kinky Friedman books. Although you do get introduced for the first tine to a number of characters that will be ongoing. This is, according to Goodreads, the second book in the Kinky Friedman series but, for some reason, it comes first in my Kinky Friedman Crime Club Collection.
Its a fairly standard detective plot with an interesting setting, but this one has less of the imaginative joy that will follow. Perhaps I've just read this one too much.
Anyway it is fun, but there are better Kinky Friedman books. Although you do get introduced for the first tine to a number of characters that will be ongoing. This is, according to Goodreads, the second book in the Kinky Friedman series but, for some reason, it comes first in my Kinky Friedman Crime Club Collection.
August 22, 2017
sembra la caricatura di mike spillane, ma in salsa country. anzi, a dire la verità è fatto troppo bene per essere solo una caricatura: le battute funzionano, i personaggi sono totalmente assurdi eppure al tempo stesso credibili (a partire dal protagonista, che poi è lo stesso kinky) e anche se l'intreccio non è il massimo (diciamo che come libro giallo non è esattamente roba da "giallo mondadori") si viene spinti a divorare il romanzo nel più breve tempo possibile, fosse solo per vedere se spunta qualche altro improbabile locale newyorkese.
e alla fine resta la voglia sia di recuperare altri libri di kinky friedman, sia di ascoltarsi una bella raccolta di hank williams.
e alla fine resta la voglia sia di recuperare altri libri di kinky friedman, sia di ascoltarsi una bella raccolta di hank williams.
March 31, 2020
I want to be Kinky Friedman when I grow up: drinking all night, sleeping til noon, two girlfriends with the same name, singing country music, solving crimes and not really working much. Old Kinky is not for everybody, if he was he would be worth a Ratso's ass. This is my second in the series and I'm reading them in order, "A Case of Lone Star" was a bit more of a whodunit, but that still not the point. The point is the wit, the wisecracks, the one-liners. In the book, Kinky quotes Oscar Wilde who wrote, "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." Wilde sure wrote it, Kinky sure lived it!
September 30, 2020
I bought this book a long time ago, but it sat with my other hardbacks and unfortunately didn't get read. So many laugh-out-loud moments. The plot was a little confusing, and how Kinky ever got to the conclusion he did is still beyond me. But as well as the lighthearted look at the 1980's, the name-dropping and insights into country music were highly entertaining. Bob Dylan's gift. The cast of oddball characters. A retro-look at country music in New York. It was just the right time to read this book.
October 9, 2024
I had heard about Kinky Friedman from his C&W music but had not read one of his book. This is a funny book through the eyes of a crazy guy and a Texan viewpoint. Some of it isn't politically correct but you need to take account of the time it was written. At the heart of the story is a pretty good mystery. This is the second book he wrote but needs to be read first as his first book takes place after it. Recommended.
October 5, 2021
Another rollicking journey through 70s and the Texas Outlaw music scene in fiction, if you are familiar with the scene much of the book makes sense to you ..... a beautiful collection of adolescent humor, musical trivia wrapped around a murder mystery under the ghost of Hank Senior. If you are anywhere and you want to go back to the hill country read this and you will be there.
March 11, 2018
The Kinksta does it again! Excellent mystery/humorous/up yours novel. Sherlock Holmes may have ruled Britania, but he holds nothing on the Kinksta! Even The Villiage irregulars kick ass, (sorry, arse), over them East Enders. Not elimentary, Watson - Fact!!!!
March 24, 2020
Lots of fun, but not quite as good as the first one. Fletch fans and country music nerds will love it. Filled with Americana acts from the Seventies and Eighties, plenty of Hank Williams trivia, and Kinky's unique brand of humor.
October 14, 2024
This is the second by Kinky, and just as good as the first. His acerbic wit joins with his sharp observance of his fellow New Yorkers blends into a great story. Jump in the rain room, grab a cup of coffee and curl up with this hilarious mystery.
October 15, 2025
Kinky Friedman #2
Second of the mystery tales sees an average affair, with more unusual events through the lens of Kinky Friedman the author and Kinky Friedman the character - and where one ends and the other begins is possibly the biggest mystery of them all.
Second of the mystery tales sees an average affair, with more unusual events through the lens of Kinky Friedman the author and Kinky Friedman the character - and where one ends and the other begins is possibly the biggest mystery of them all.
December 22, 2018
Check brain in at door entertainment. Good one liners.
April 28, 2022
I am rereading the Kinkster. This one is much better than his first book. The Chet Flippo book that is a major plot point I read 25 years ago and it was great.
September 8, 2023
I listened to the audiobook. It was okay. Wasn't very funny. Wasn't very interesting. Wasn't very well plotted.
January 22, 2025
It is many years since I came across the title “More Kinky Friedman” in a bookshop in Grasmere. The bookshop is no longer there (but the wonderful “Grasmere Bookshop” still is, I’m pleased to say), but it was my introduction to the crazy world of Vandam Street and the life of the Kinkster. The love affair lasted through many books, until he pushed it a little too far 10 or 11 books later.
So, a reread and back to the fun and the warped one-liners. Not to mention, the cat, the coffee, the dreadful cigars and the panoply of ‘friends’. There’s a plot and murders and, ultimately, a murderer - but that’s not the point. The warped journey is the fun.
So, a reread and back to the fun and the warped one-liners. Not to mention, the cat, the coffee, the dreadful cigars and the panoply of ‘friends’. There’s a plot and murders and, ultimately, a murderer - but that’s not the point. The warped journey is the fun.
April 16, 2020
I first came across the Kinky Friedman crime books about twenty years ago (I first read this on 13 July 1994) and I read four or five them so I was pleased to come across three of his books in the library last week. In the intervening years I have heard and enjoyed some of his music too. This is the second time I have read this and it's a good read even if the plot does not quite make sense. Kinky Friedman is a witty writer and of course is a real person as are many of the characters in the book even if the story is pure fiction.
August 25, 2009
It was a quick read, but I enjoy country music and political incorrectness. I'm glad Jerry Jeff Walker and Asleep at the Wheel weren't killed. I'm glad to see there is some appreciation for Texas music. I have respect for the quote about getting decent Mexican food. It's just not the same as it is with Texican flavor.
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