When a friend, and fellow comedian, of Biff Kincaid’s is murdered after asking him to fill in for him on a comedy gig Biff decides to nose around a bit. In the process he comes across a conspiracy of the rich to steal what money can’t buy and to murder anyone who gets in their way. But Biff is as good at improvising his investigations as he is his comedy routine and when it comes to finding out the truth he is definitely not joking around.
The old theatre saying that, “Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.” applies as well to murder/detective fiction, but Dan Barton handles both effortlessly in his first book, Killer Material. Biff Kincaid is a professional comedian who is Irish of heritage, strong of fist, sharp of wit and mysterious of origin. What more could you ask of a detective hero? His Irish heritage gives him an interesting and believable background; being good with his fist and sharp with his tongue has been a requirement for every appealing `tough-guy’ detective from Chandler’s Marlowe to Parker’s Spenser and as for mysterious of origin…how many comedians are familiar with stakeout and tailing procedures while also owning a literal suitcase full of weapons? Basically, Kincaid is a very cool character and all of the secondary characters that surround him equally three-dimensional and, for the most part, true to form. The comedy circuit setting is colorful and well presented in addition to being a wonderful venue for a `hard-boiled’ detective who isn’t a professional private eye. As for the writing itself, this is one of the best books by a new writer that I’ve read in quite awhile. If this is Barton’s fledgling outing I can hardly wait to see what happens when he really spreads his wings. Killer Material compares very well with other note-worthy first outings in this genre such as Parker’s The Godwulf Manuscript and Crais’ The Monkey’s Raincoat.
The only nit I have to pick is that some of the character’s actions felt a little forced toward the end. For example, nightclub owner Richard Moftus going to the lengths he did to help Kincaid at the end given the short time they’d known each other. Another character toward the end gives up on her dream with no strong reason for doing so just when she seems on the road to success. These nits are too small to detract from Killer Material, but a little more exposition on why these characters behaved the way they did would have been nice.
This book is very well worth reading if you enjoy the smart mouth, hard boiled genre of detective fiction so, just for laughs, go buy a copy of Killer Material. It’s well worth the dough.
Grade: A+
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