BillLindau

Book reviews

Book reviews: ‘The Killing Club,’ latest George Carlin work
‘Marcie Walsh’s’ whodunit a real page-turner; Carlin tickles the funnybone again
From The Post of Troy, N.C., March 2005
By Bill Lindau
“The Killing Club,” by Michael Malone (Hyperion, New York). Based on a story by Josh Griffith. Fiction. 278 pages. $19.95.
The dust jacket of this mystery novel lists another author, Marcie Walsh. She’s actually the fictional author. Malone, a longtime North Carolina mystery writer and TV scriptwriter, did the actual writing. Marcie Walsh is a character played by Kathy Brier on the popular ABC soap opera “One Life to Live,” and this book that she “wrote” plays a large part in a murder mystery on the TV program.
Malone puts his famous easygoing style to work again in this latest whodunit. His other mystery novels include “Uncivil Seasons,” “Handling Sin” and “The Last Noel”. His characters are believable, the dialogue amazingly realistic, thanks to all his years as OLTL’s head writer. He has received an Emmy award for his work on this soap, and has received Edgar and O. Henry awards for his mystery novels.
In Malone’s latest work, Jamie Ferrara, a police detective in the small town of Gloria, New Jersey, narrates the action. Ten years ago in high school, Jamie and other so-called outcasts formed a group called The Killing Club. In this group, the often picked-on kids make up creative ways to kill their tormentors. They all recorded these pretend murders in a Death Book. The group broke up after one of the members apparently committed suicide.
Years later, one of the so-called misfits in this group, Ben Tyvola, has been murdered. Jamie’s fiancé, Rod, who is also her superior in the police department, is about to write off his death as a freak household accident; he tripped over a wire going to the basement and fell downstairs, then the house caught fire. Jamie, however, can’t help believing it’s foul play. The way Tyvola died bears too much resemblance to one of the murders their old high-school group dreamed up and put down in the Death Book.
Other characters that used to belong to The Killing Club show up for Ben’s funeral. After that, another of them is murdered, followed by several more, all killed in one way or another that they had come up with for the Death Book.
Most of Jamie’s friends and family believe there’s no connection between The Killing Club and the murders, which all look like ordinary accidents, such as a car crash or a bow hunting accident. But she finds too many clues, and unearths too much dirty laundry, to know somebody really is knocking off the old Killing Club members.
I’m not a big whodunit aficionado; too many murder mysteries are formulaic. I’ve only read one Agatha Christie novel in my life, because many people called her the queen of formula fiction. That’s not Malone’s style; he gives as much life to his characters as he attempts to give plausibility to his plots.
I only have one gripe: This book has too many characters. You have to keep a box score to tell them all apart. You have Jamie, Rod, Pudge, Garth and his sister, Connie the Catholic Priest, Jamie’s ex-cop father, her druggie rock-’n’-roller kid brother, Jamie’s deceased sister’s adolescent son and his yuppie scum father Barclay and his father’s second wife and snob mother. And I haven’t even mentioned everybody.
For a page-turner, you can’t beat this book, however. Just make a list of all the characters so you can tell who’s who and you’ve got a good, red-blooded American whodunit. Kudos to Michael Malone for his latest book.
***
Also new in area libraries
“When will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?” by George Carlin (Hyperion, New York, 2004). Humor. 295 pages. $23.95.
George Carlin has been a comic superstar for most of my adult life. I think of him as the Irish Lenny Bruce. His humor is just as irreverent, shoot-from-the-hip-py. There isn’t a thing in American life that he doesn’t make fun of, including religion, popular culture and especially contemporary expressions. He pokes fun at the political correctness and yuppification of society.
For example, he bewails the time when suddenly people stopped saying “toilet paper” and calling it “bathroom tissue.” “I wasn’t consulted on this. I didn’t get a postcard, I didn’t get an e-mail, no one bothered to call. It just happened,” he says. Loafers became slip-ons, sweatpants and sweatshirts became active wear, store clerks became product specialists and sales counselors and every employee from a janitor to a fast-food worker became an associate.
Here are a few other Carlinisms this book includes:
* “Ultimately, a goldfish can kill a gorilla. However, it does require a substantial element of surprise.”
* “The pyramids are not really old. They were built in 1943 as a joke by drunken Italian soldiers on leave in Egypt at the time.”
* “In the future:….Men will learn to control the weather with a large hammer….All the knowledge in the world will be contained on a single, tiny silicon chip which someone will misplace” and
* “Children’s Hospital in New York is quite an amazing place. On a recent visit, I saw two seven-year-olds performing a kidney transplant.”
You can never be too thin, or too rich. Or have too much comic relief. That’s not what George Carlin said. That’s what Bill Lindau said. Check out this man’s latest book if you want something that I guarantee will chase off the Blue Meanies.
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Contact Bill Lindau at blindau52@yahoo.com.

posted by Bill Lindau @ 8:26 PM