Kinky Friedman Mystery Collection

Kinky Friedman Books

Steppin' on a Rainbow by Kinky Friedman

Sly, devious, inventive, and more than a little irritating, the Bard of Vandam Street returns in Steppin' on a Rainbow, a new adventure full of sound, fury, and a hula girl or two.
Alone in the world -- meaning: anyone who will speak to him is out of town -- Kinky Friedman ponders the imponderables of life and discusses the state of the world with his cat. The cat, of course, says nothing. Kinky's reverie (and constant state of morbid self-absorption) is interrupted by a call from an old friend in Hawaii, Will Hoover, a journalist on a Honolulu newspaper. Hoover has called with a problem: Mike McGovern, one of Kinky's sidekicks and a stalwart Village Irregular, visiting Hawaii to work on a book, has disappeared while strolling on the beach. Knowing McGovern's penchant for taking the occasional side trip, Kinky is not overly concerned.

As the days turn into yet more days, however, consternation grows to the point where Stephanie Dupont (called home from a Caribbean lull to bury her sixteen-year-old pesky Maltese dog) urges Kinky to fly to Hawaii to look into McGovern's disappearance and even offers to join him in the search. Additional support comes from P. I. Steve Rambam, who wings in from Israel to join in the hunt, as well as Kinky's pal John McCall, the Shampoo King from Dripping Springs. Texas, that is.

Once in Hawaii, Kinky, Stephanie, Rambam, Hoover, and McCall set off on a perilous adventure involving ancient myths, sacrificial cults, totems, taboos, and the occasional lei.

Steppin' on a Rainbow is Kinky Friedman doing what only Kinky Friedman can do -- and, as always, it's outrageous, unsettling, and very, very moving, all at once.

The Mile High Club by Kinky Friedman

The Mile High Club is a novel of intrigue, irreverence, international terrorism, humor, suspense, and cross-dressing, in which the intrepid Kinky Friedman gets more than his leg pulled when he encounters a mysterious vamp on an airplane.
It all starts with a casual flirtation, two people on a flight from Dallas to New York. She is gorgeous and mysterious; he is a private detective. When the plane lands, the detective -- our hero Kinky Friedman -- finds that he's been left holding the bag, in this case literally holding a bright pink cosmetic bag. The mysterious woman, having asked the Kinkster to watch her luggage while she visits the dumpster, has taken a powder and somehow has vanished.
Confident that he'll find the mystery woman again, Kinky holds on to the bag. Sure enough she does turn up, but not before Kinky has excited the interest of an array of "suits" from the State Department, been party to a thwarted kidnap attempt by Arab terrorists, and found a dead Israeli agent parked on the toilet of his downtown Manhattan loft.
Employing the able-bodied assistance of his usual sidekicks, the Village Irregulars, Kinky eventually gets to the bottom of all the comings and goings and comings of the many visitors to his loft -- including two late-night visits by the mysterious, and suddenly affectionate, woman from the plane and one not-so-late visit by her angry brother. Before it's over, the bag is gone.
Despite the many comparisons made by the critics, citing his resemblance to one great writer after another, the truth is that no other writer combines intriguing mystery with bawdy one-liners quite like Kinky Friedman. Alternately raunchy, offbeat, and hilarious, The Mile High Club, complete with a surprise ending, is Kinky at his very considerable best.

Spanking Watson : A Novel by Kinky Friedman

Just as every dog must have its day, so must every Sherlock have his Watson -- even if the Sherlock in question resides in a downtown loft with an ill tempered cat, a perpetually smiling puppet head, and ceiling badly in need of repair, all thanks in no small part to the often-less-than-light-on-its-feet lesbian dance class held daily in the loft above.
And just as misery loves company, so does Kinky Friedman, the erstwhile Sherlock in question, love his tormentors from above -- enough so that when someone sends a threatening missive to the head lesbian dance-person, Winnie Katz, Kinky, in a mood of forgive-and-forget, sets out to find the perpetrator and to save the day.
Of course, just as nothing is ever as it seems, so is Kinky "Ace Private Big Dick" Friedman, not quite so altruistic as he may appear -- for, in fact, it was the Kinkster himself who wrote the threatening note to Ms. Katz, and then called upon each of his ubiquitous Village Irregulars (the mighty Mike McGovern, the mercurial Ratso Sloman, the marvelous Stephanie Dupont, and the masterful Steve Rambam) to solve the mystery, and in the process give Kinky a first-rate opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of each of his would-be Watsons.
But just as it's not where you start but where you finish, so does Kinky soon find himself caught up in a conundrum of Sherlockian proportions when the bogus death threat turns suddenly, chillingly real -- and an actual killer steps forward to carry out Kinky's impotent threat.
And just as all things must end, so must this flap copy.

The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover by Kinky Friedman

Amazon.com
Texas musician Friedman writes mysteries the way he sings -- lots of humming, head-scratching and general fooling around. There are always plenty of cigars and an inevitable cat. But his loyal fans lap up his books and will certainly welcome this newest addition. The Kinkster's boozy reporter (is there any another kind in mystery fiction?) friend McGovern is being plagued by FBI agents disguised as aliens, so Friedman sets off on a journey of discovery to Washington and Al Capone's old Chicago haunts.

The Mile High Club by Kinky Friedman

It all starts with a casual flirtation, two people on a flight from Dallas to New York. She's gorgeous and mysterious; he's a private detective. When the plane lands, the detective -- our hero, Kinky -- finds he's been left holding the bag, literally. The woman, having asked the Kinkster to watch her luggage while she visits the can, has taken a powder and somehow vanished. Mystery Woman does turn up again, but not before Kinky has claimed the interest of an array of suits from the State Department, been party to a thwarted kidnap attempt by Arab terrorists, and found a dead Israeli agent parked on the toilet of his downtown Manhattan loft.
Employing the able-bodied assistance of his usual sidekicks, the Village Irregulars, Kinky eventually gets to the bottom of all the comings and goings of the many visitors to his loft, including two late-night visits by the mysterious and suddenly affectionate woman from the plane and one not-so-late-night visit by her angry brother.
Raunchy, offbeat, and hilarious, The Mile High Club, complete with a surprise ending, is Kinky at his considerable best.

Blast from the Past by Kinky Friedman

Amazon.com
Kinky's back, and Abbie Hoffman's got him. Or he's got Abbie. Or a mysterious man with dirty blonde hair and a faded camouflage jacket has them both in his gunsights. It's always hard to tell who the bad guys are, because the country-western singer turned author draws an almost invisible line between his real life and his fictional adventures. That, of course, is where the fun comes in. In Blast from the Past, the Kinkster serves up an appetizer for his myriad fans--a prequel to such novels as Roadkill and The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover. The book explains how Kinky got into the detecting game and met up with the Greenwich Village irregulars who populate this popular series--Ratso, Rambam, McGovern, and the luscious Stephanie DuPont. The action takes place in the post-Watergate 1970s, when Abbie's hiding out in upstate New York, sex and drugs are de riguer, and nobody's ever heard of political correctness. The mystery is pretty simple--you can see the ending coming long before Kinky can--but that's never been the point of these bawdy, irreverent tales. To quote Friedman himself, "Being a private dick is pretty simple. Once you run out of cocaine, crazy ideas, and self-pitying bullshit, you're eventually left with the truth."

Armadillos & Old Lace by Kinky Friedman

Hoping to escape New York City violence by taking a break in Texas, Jewish country-western singer and amateur detective Kinky Friedman is asked by a local justice of the peace to solve the murders of four senior citizens.

Elvis, Jesus and Coca-Cola by Kinky Friedman

When an ex-girlfriend disappears, a documentary-in-progress turns up missing, and the screenwriter working on it overdoses, Kinky Friedman takes on a case complicated by murder, mayhem, and Elvis impersonators.

When the Cat's Away by Kinky Friedman

God Bless John Wayne by Kinky Friedman

Ace detective Kinky Friedman's is asked is to track down the birth parents of his freeloader friend Ratso, but when Ratso turns up dead, Kinky follows a trail of clues from downtown Manhattan to a Hudson River estate, where a medicine chest reveals the tragic truth.

Roadkill by Kinky Friedman

The incorrigible country-singer-cum-writer offers another mystery starring his eponymous protagonist, who undertakes a life-threatening mission to aid his old pal, Willie Nelson, when Nelson becomes involved in a medicine man's death.

About the Author
Kinky Friedman, former leader of the band The Texas Jewboys, lives on a ranch in the Texas Hill Country with six dogs, two cats and one armadillo. He is the author of fourteen and a half internationally acclaimed mystery novels and nine country music albums. These days, he travels the world, singing the songs that made him infamous and reading from the books that made him respectable.

OxfordBooks.com / Oxford, MS

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