Monday, December 24, 2012

A Monkey Book Report

Someone is killing rappers in Koontown.  And it takes supermodel turned cop turned private investigator Genevieve 'Jon Vee' Noire and a gaggle of the wildest characters ever to grace the pages of a modern novel to figure out who's doing it and why they're doing it.  We ride along with Ms. Noire as she tells us the story and the story behind the story of what's turning Koontown upside down.

I can count on one hand the novels and short stories that made me laugh out loud, The World According to Garp (John Irving), Journalism in Tennessee (Mark Twain), Good as Gold and Catch 22, and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (Tom Robbins).  But none of those stories or novels made me laugh out loud like Koontown Killing Kaper did.  I found this book to a one of the funniest, sickest, most twisted, and perversely brilliant novels I have ever read.  It's pitch black satire that made me howl.  There are so many scenes to love in this book.  The scene where the fans of slain rappers Funky Dollah Bill and Irie Man confront one another, the scene in the beauty parlor where we meet Welfare Queen who shoots babies out every two or three minutes only to see her male babies go straight into the prison industrial complex, the scene in the Koontown morgue where they process upwards of 400 corpses a day due to all the fatal shootings and drug use in Koontown, the scene at the Ubernoggin's party, the scene at the Church of Racial Reconciliation where you go to reconcile yourself to your racism not to reconcile yourself with people of other races, the scene where we meet the mayor of Koontown, all those scenes and more had me laughing and kept me turning page after page to see just what other madness the author Bill Campbell was going to come up with.  Toss in White Jesus, a vagina that talks, sings, and writes best sellers, and you've got one hell of a read.

In this novel Campbell, and full disclosure here, Bill and I have been blog and Facebook friends for a long time but even if we weren't I'd still say the same things about this book, sets up stereotypes and he knocks them down with his twisted wit.  He knocks them down, stomps on them, blows them up, and rubs the little pieces in our faces, but we're too busy laughing and enjoying his prose to complain.  His satire not only reaches Swiftian heights, he passes Jonathon Swift in a satire fueled Ferrari that reaches speeds in excess of 150 MPH, yeah, I just mixed metaphors, deal with it.

You seriously need to buy and read this book.  Buy it on Amazon and from the writer himself by clicking here.  I mean it.  Buy this book, it's funny, shocking, twisted, sick, and entertaining as hell. 

1 comment:

Barbara Bruederlin said...

This sounds like a delightfully bizarre novel! I'll look into it.