I'm Dying Here

June 29, 2009
Set in Australia, this offbeat crime novel from collaborators Broderick and Barnes (The Hunger of Time
) strives for laughs at the expense of pretty much everything else, with uneven results. In the first chapter, someone drives a Mack truck into Feng Shui Solutions, the consulting office of the book's hero, Recherché Doubting Thomas Purdue, while Purdue is interviewing an attractive prospective female client. What starts out as satire eventually takes a serious turn with the revelation of Purdue's tragic backstory. A drug-sniffing dog foiled his attempt, at age 21, to smuggle dope seeds into the U.S. After his conviction, Purdue went out of his way to spend an extra half-year in prison to bulk himself up, unaware that his wife was dying. Racing-camel doping, UFO mutilations and cyber-stalking all play a part in the zany plot.

August 1, 2009
This one-of-a-kind Australian detective novel starring a sleuth who poses as a feng shui consultant (various shenanigans in Melbourne, as well as some hard time in a U.S. jail, keep him from holding a private-eye license) answers many questions of burning interest to mystery fans. For starters, there is the age-old matter of whether of its possible to meld the absurdism of Carl Hiaasen with the snappy dialogue of Raymond Chandler and come up with a real crime novelas opposed to a parody of the real thing. Then there is this head scratcher: What would happen if you doped a racing camel by mainlining a gallon of glucose right into the animals carotid artery and then had an Ivy-educated Saudi sheik arrive by helicopter with the intention of buying the animal after a suitable test run? The answer to that one adds up to one of the funniest scenes in crime fiction this year (the hopped-up dromedary goes one-on-one with the whirlybird). Finally, you might wonder if Australians can write this kind of off-the-wall caper novel as well as Americans. The answer is a resounding yes.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)