COFFEE, SHOPPING, MURDER, LOVE, horrible gay people say & do awful things for fun & profit

COFFEE, SHOPPING, MURDER, LOVE
CARLOS ALLENDE
Red Hen Press
$25.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A campy dark comedy for the angry and the disenchanted.

Last November, I found a dead body inside the freezer that my roommate keeps inside the garage. My first thought was to call the police, but Jignesh hadn’t paid his share of the rent just yet. It wasn’t due until the thirtieth, and you know how difficult it is to find people who pay on time. Jignesh always does. Also, he had season tickets for the LA Opera, and well . . . Madame Butterfly. Tosca. The Flying Dutchman . . . at the Dorothy Chandler . . . you cannot say no to that, can you? Well, it’s been a few good months now—Madame Butterfly was just superb, thank you. However, last Friday, I found a second body inside that stupid freezer in the garage. This time I’m evicting Jignesh. My house isn’t a mortuary . . . alas, I need to come up with some money first. You’ll understand, therefore, that I desperately need to sell this novel. Just enough copies to help me survive until I find a job . . . what could I do that doesn’t demand too much effort? We have a real treasure here, anyhow. Some chapters are almost but not quite pornographic. You could safely lend this to nana afterward!

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Okay, I admit it: I loathed Jignesh, I despised Charlie, and I detested the victims...all of them see themselves as victims, of course. I was shocked by the hateful, racist nastiness, the body dysmorphia, the sex and the violence was all very tame though...and I still, to my slightly horrified embarassment, laughed out loud.

I feel dirty and ashamed admitting that. Like Charlie does after, um, sealing the deal with Jignesh. (This happened under such murky circumstances I was shocked that Author Allende didn't go into gory detail, but thank goodness no.) The things that make the book fun to read are the ways that Author Allende harks back to The Day of the Locust and Miss Lonelyhearts in all their embittered, Hollywood-materialism-hatin' glory. The things that aren't as evocative of the bitter, sarcastic West-world are the things that slow us down, like the switching PoV between Charlie's verbal fleuve and Jignesh's hugely overacted rages and the evil things he does in secret to express them. (No one can think of a reason to beat him up if they don't know it's him doing the nasty stuff to make their lives miserable. Except his mother, of course.)

So, with the two leads being such a pair of pricks in WeHo Princess drag, what's in it for the reader? A truly unvarnished look at what the hell we've done to our culture? A raunchy ride through the libido of a sad, little man who loves no one and nothing except what he's been told makes him look good? An immigrant whose family isn't made up of people who have any use for him, Family First culture back home be damned?

All that and more. The sheer volume of words coming out of Charlie does get numbing but goodness me, look at how much you learn about abuse and violence meted out on his short little self. Jignesh thinks all the trouble in the world is going to fall directly onto his head and, preemptively, gets angry enough to...avoid it, somehow. It's quite startling. He's definitely on the way down and...Ganesha gives him luck? The horrible racists he works with call his overweight self "Ganesha" behind his back, and I'd say "shame on you" to them via the author if Jignesh didn't get himself some brilliant, if cruel, revenge on each and every one of them.

By the end of the story, I was worn down. I'd been dipping near the Lake of Fire with Charlie prating and mewling to any- and everyone about things a slightly sentient person would've known not to say anything about. I'd seen Doom flying in on her broom, aiming right for the pair of 'em. And *snap* up comes the handle and the bristles of Doom's broom give a light dust-off to their plans as she flies away. By the end of the book...Deirdre and Jana and the mural for Jignesh's clients...the phone call from Mike, Jignesh's boss...I needed a lie-down.

So what's up with my rating not being a Full Five? It was headed for 3 early on because Charlie's narrative voice *really* got on my nerves. Jignesh's career as a Kindle Direct Publishing fantasy novelist (SALMONELLA IS A DISEASE, JIGNESH!) wasn't carried throughout the read, but used as a parsley garnish on a tiramisù. Charlie's sexual escapades were, while undetailed thank goodness, really not necessary to say anything new or more about his character (or lack thereof) and honestly weren't titillating to make up for their uselessness in plot or characterization terms. The crimes and follies that Jignesh and Charlie careen into and hurtle out of are fun, and highly kinetic; but they don't do anything the second, or third, times that they didn't do the first one.

That said, I am never going to forget either of these lousy human beings because they kept me rapt for several hours, bashing the Kindle screen a little harder than necessary each time I needed to move on to the next page. It was a good, fun ride, just one that went a *little* too often over the same curves to be exceptional.