Drop Dead, My Lovely

Description: Drop Dead, My Lovely Product Description A one-time mild-mannered bookstore clerk transformed into a hard-boiled private detective thanks to a head injury, Pete Ingalls decides to open up his own detective agency, taking Raymond Chandler as his model, and finds himself on the trail of a variety of shady characters, dealing with damsels in distress, and tracking a killer, with only his delusion to sustain him. 17,500 first printing. From Publishers Weekly In his satiric first novel, humorist Weiner (The Joy of Worry) pokes fun at the private eye genre with mixed results. When Pete Ingalls comes to after being knocked unconscious by a pile of books in a Manhattan bookstore, he remembers only the hard-boiled detective novels he's read. He rents an office, dresses in 1940s-style clothing and hires small-time actress Stephanie Constantino to be his secretary. Mysterious, elusive Celeste Vroman asks him to find her missing married lover, attorney Jeffrey Litman. A second client, Catherine Flonger, wants Ingalls to discover if her husband, a famous TV news anchor, is seeing another woman. Blundering, naïve and inept, Ingalls nonetheless easily locates Litman, who confesses he's spurned Celeste for "class skirt" Olivia Cartwright, whose strangled body turns up in a seedy hotel room in the "prologue" that falls between chapters one and two. Mrs. Flonger makes finding her husband almost too easy. Breezy, often funny, this uneven book is rife with silly puns. When Stephanie tells Ingalls she's playing Viola in Twelfth Night, he quips, "Playing the fiddle while you're acting?" But there's some good writing, too: one character "had the pale, smooth skin of a man who went outside principally to hail cabs." Weiner clearly owes a debt to P.G. Wodehouse (a passage from The Code of the Woosters serves as an epigraph), but here he lacks the British master's sure comic touch. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. About the Author Ellis Weiner was an original columnist for Spy Magazine and an editor of National Lampoon from 1976-1978. He contributed to all the best group satire projects of the day, including Not the New York Times and Off the Wall Street Journal. He has published numerous humor pieces in The New Yorker, Paris Review, and the New York Times Magazine, among others. Fast and Free Shipping You're already purchasing the item. Why pay additional for shipping, especially slow shipping? We get your order shipped out within 1-business day and delivered to your doorstep as quickly as possible. Competitive Pricing With our dynamic pricing model, our prices are always competitive. Our prices are some of the lowest that you will find on the internet. Rest assured that you're getting a good deal when purchasing with us. 30-day Money Back Guarantee We are committed to making sure that you leave this transaction satisfied. If you're unhappy with the product for any reason, you may return it back for your money-back or a replacement within 30 days. No questions asked!

Price: 22.97 USD

Location: Houston, Texas

End Time: 2025-01-30T03:58:16.000Z

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