Books like The Kinky Friedman Crime Club

A Case of Lone Star: Someone is going around killing others, leaving Hank Williams song lyrics as clues. Kinky Friedman, being a country western aficianado, uses his knowledge and detective skills to find the killer.Greenwich Killing Time: This is Friedman's first book, but strangely the second installment in this collection. I enjoyed the Hank Williams connection from A Case of Lone Star in the other story, but this one was fine also with the added bonus of a "ghost". A bit of a disjointed story, but I feel the Friedman-author was really flexing his muscles when it came to writing the Friedman-character. Fine enough twist for a light mystery, just like A Case of Lone Star. Apparently Friedman was doing a lot of blow when he wrote this, and I think that's probably evident from the reading.When the Cat's Away: Kinky-the-character (and I assume Kinky-the-author as well) is a hard-drinkin', cigar-smokin', cat-lovin' mofo. This addition to the collection involves the theft of a cat at a cat show, though, luckily, not Kinky's own kitteh. This one didn't work very much for me at all, though probably mostly because I'm a bit over this collection and these stories. A little Kinky goes a long way.These are certainly fun reads, and I think anyone who is more into these sorts of mysteries would enjoy it more than I did. This amateur sleuth is extra rough around the edges, a little misogynistic, a tad racist, and the humor throughout with some of the one-liners were amusing at times, but grew old quickly. You know what else grew old quickly? Calling a telephone a "blower". Every. Time.While Kinky himself has a background and is a well fleshed out character, most of the supporting cast is one-dimensional, especially the suspects, which made me mostly just not care very much how things wrapped up.Then again, I found this for free in the Give-a-Book, Take-a-Book mailbox thing outside my boyfriend's store, so I can't really complain. It was fine for being a free book. I don't think I'll be reading more of Friedman's mysteries in the future, but they were fine to pass the time. I'm much more interested in Friedman the country-singer-turned-politician-turned-author. If there's a bio out there, I'll read it.In the meantime, the best part about this book was carrying it on the bus and conveniently accidentally covering all the words in the title except "The Kinky" with my cell phone and having those poor Pitt and Carnegie Mellon University boys fall over themselves trying to see what I was really reading.