Wild Thing -- Josh Bazell

A couple of years ago I reviewed Bazell's first book, Beat the Reaper. I'm sure that a lot of people who read that one wondered if Bazell could possibly top it, or even come close. Wild Thing comes close, but it's dialed back a notch or so from Beat the Reaper. Don't let that worry you, though. Even dialed back a notch or two, it's still about ten times wilder and crazier than anything else you're likely to run across.

Pietro Brnwa, or Peter Brown, is going by the name Lionel Azimuth as the book opens. He's serving as a doctor on a cruise ship when he gets an offer from an odd billionaire who wants him to go monster hunting up on Oregon. The hunt is apparently serious business, and there's even going to be a referee. Who the ref is turns out to be pretty funny, and it's probably going to be one of the worst-kept secrets of the year. But I'm not telling.

The combination of outrageous humor, social commentary, sex, footnotes, and violence shouldn't work, but it does. The footnotes are often hilarious (there's even a guest footnote). This time out, Bazell clearly has a message, too, and if you don't get enough of it in the course of the novel, there's an appendix that spells things out in a scary enough fashion. And the "Sources" section is also good fun, so don't skip it. The whole package gets a big thumbs-up from me.