Phillip Horkman's a fairly bright, mild-mannered guy who owns a pet shop called The Wine Shop. Jeffery Peckerman's a forensic plumber who's everything Horkman isn't. He's crude, rude, and stupid. So this is an odd-couple novel.
The action begins when Horkman is refereeing a soccer game and calls a foul against Peckerman's daughter. A little later, Peckerman visits The Wine Shop under the impression that he can buy wine there. He leaves under duress with a stolen lemur, which Horkman tries to retrieve, ruining Peckerman's swale in the process. It's at this point that things begin an escalation into the realm of the ridiculous (or possibly the sublime, depending on your mood). Rather than revealing more of the plot, such as it is, I'll just say that the book could have been called Philip and Jeffery Conquer the World.
Lunatics strikes me as the kind of book that you'll either love or hate. It's full of sophomoric humor, potty jokes, ethnic slurs, and more. To my shame, I'll admit that I laughed a lot. You might not. There's only one way to find out.
Okay, in case you're asking yourself what the connection to mysteries is, I'll tell you right off the bat: for many years Will Cuppy reviewed crime fiction for the New York Herald Tribune. I wonder how many people besides me know that. Anyway, you can read his review of a mystery by David Dodge on this page (scroll down).
And there's plenty of criminality in The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody, though it's certainly not a mystery. It's a wonderful, hilarious book, though, and I love it. I've read it two or three times over the years. It's history, and probably fairly accurate history, filtered through Cuppy's unique sensibility. You should read the introduction. You'll discover that Cuppy was the kind of guy who had to know everything about whatever he wrote about. He'd read 25 thick volumes before writing a 1000 word piece. That might explain why this book wasn't finished at his death, though he'd been working on it, off and on, for 16 years.
What's here, though, is great stuff. Chapters on all kinds of historical figures, from Lady Godiva (the cover girl, natch) to Charlemagne to Columbus. And more. Much more.
Cuppy loved footnotes, which you might find irritating. So would I, if the footnotes weren't hilarious, as all of Cuppy's are. You need a laugh? Read this book. You want to know about Catherine the Great? Read this book. Would I steer you wrong?
