The Mean Streets

Crooked by Brian Wiprud

Bantam (Paperback)

August 2006

Brian Wiprud’s latest is as madcap and as frantic as you could want. In fact, it might even be more madcap and frantic than you want. Wiprud is, I think, something of an acquired taste. Luckily, lots of mystery fans – including me – have been so afflicted.

Readers of the author’s earlier books, Pipsqueak (2004) and Stuffed (2005), will surely recall that taxidermy collector Garth Carson has a brother named Nicholas Palihnic. Palihnic is, if you can imagine such a thing, the black sheep of the family and he assumes the lead role here in the pages of Crooked. Nicky is hired by an insurance firm to broker the return of a stolen painting. When Palihnic’s contact turns up with an ice pick in the

back of his neck, Nick becomes the prime suspect in the eyes of the NYPD. But rest assured that ole’ Nicky’s troubles have just begun.

Stolen art, a fortune in sunken treasure lost somewhere beneath the Triborough Bridge, sinister villains (including a rotund Chinese assassin wearing a porkpie hat) and a whole menagerie of quirky but lovable characters; what you end up with here is crime fiction for the whole damn family. The whole family that is, if your surname is Marx, Addams or maybe even Manson!

Detailed review to follow.

In the meantime, check out Brian Wiprud’s website for more information at: http://www.wiprud.com/ The site is just about as irrepressible as Brian’s prose!

The author’s earlier, self-published novel, Sleeps With the Fishes, has been revised and is being released by Bantam in October 2006.

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