A Guy, a Girl and a Voodoo Monkey Hand

I wanted to like this book so much. I read the previous reviews, and was excited to read it. But this book has some serious problems. As mentioned in the title of this review, the first two pages of the book are solid. They set up for a story of humor like that of Lemony Snicket, with interesting characters and a quirky lifestyle. Then the story switches to first person, and everything goes wrong with the story.

I don't think that this book deserves the effort of writing full paragraphs to explain everything that made it a chore to finish, so I'll make a list. Otherwise, this might digress into rants about individual scenes that made me roll my eyes and audibly groan.

- Weird and chaotic things happen in this book, and since passersby never seem to have a reaction to them, the readers are led to believe that things like cars blowing up and people carrying grenade launchers on their back are normal. It's never stated or implied, but given the situations, the reader has no choice but to assume. Then, later, it is revealed that the things that happened would be the same as if they happened in present-day Chicago (due to the protagonist worrying about the fallouts of his actions). There is no continuity in the written universe about whether explosions and deaths are taken lightly or otherwise.
- The author attempts to shove every joke of which he thought into the book. I imagine that every joke that he thought of was included, and it really over-done. Some scenes would be funny without the parenthetical thought processes that are supposed to add humor that ruin the train of thought. If the author had not switched to first person, then it could have worked (like it did in the prologue), but with us reading into the mind of the character, it ruined the actual humor.
- The tone of the character is unclear throughout the entire book. The detective is written like a twenty-two year old college kid, but talks about past marriages and careers like he is supposed to be a grizzled fifty year old. Nothing about the character is grizzled, but the author tried really hard to convince us that the detective is seasoned, without ever succeeding.
- Characters make zero sense. There is no natural progression of characterization. The author simply puts feelings where he wants them, and doesn't lead them there. There is a girl whom he meet hours previously that he not only talks about flirting (which is fine, and even expected), but starts talking about “loving looks” between a mother and a father.
- Treats the rape of mentally autistic character as a gag point for two other characters. It treats the autistic person with zero nuance at all, and it very over the line of offensive.
- At one point, literally every single time a car starts, the detective gushes about how much he loves his car. It's an odd relationship to say the least, and nothing ever comes from it. There is never a point. I kept expecting it to simply be overdone foreshadowing, but it's not.
- “P.I. Sense” is just code for “I'm too lazy to actually come up with a reason or story for this, so I'll figure out this impossible task with ‘PI sense'“
- The author tries to have so many strings that all connect into one web, but fails to make them connect in any way other than to say that they connect.

Overall, I cannot recommend this book. The premise is interesting, but the execution failed, and the poor writing and scattered characters just made the whole thing a mess.