Books like The Time Machine Did It

The hero of The Time Machine Did It is a stupid overweight detective named Homer Simpson Frank Burly.It’s easy to confuse Homer with Frank because author John Swartzwelder wrote over 50 episodes of The Simpsons. After he left the show, Swartzwelder, a notorious recluse, started writing absurd comic novels that he has self-published to avoid having to deal with demands of publishers. Apparently you can take the writer out of The Simpsons but you can’t take The Simpsons out of the writer because there’s a streak of outlandish humor featuring the so-dumb-it’s-smart lines that the show excelled at in its prime.Frank Burly is a lousy detective who gets hired by a penniless bum who claims he was rich just the day before, and he wants Frank to find a figurine that used to be in the mansion he claimed he owned. Slow-witted Frank goes around asking questions and getting beaten up by crooked cops and criminals until he realizes that the thieves have gotten their hands on a time machine and are going to the past and stealing everything they can. Frank manages to get the time machine and takes his own trip to the past where he promptly starts wrecking history by doing things like starting World War II.The plot, such as it is, is really just an excuse to string together a bunch of jokes about how stupid Frank is. For example: “He went on and on about how delicate space and time was. I didn’t buy it. I mean, if you think it’s easy to change world events, try it. You don’t need a time machine. You’re already living in somebody’s past and someone else’s future. Just step on a bug or something and see what that gets you. See if now you were never born or suddenly now there’s fifty Hitlers in your bathroom, crapping all over everything. It ain’t going to happen. At least that’s what I figured.”So there’s some funny stuff here, but with no real characters or plot, it’s really just a bunch of jokes strung together with no real impact after the initial chuckle factor. If you’re in the mood for some absurd humor, it’s quick and good for laughs, but overall it reads like a script for one of Treehouse of Horror scenes from The Simpsons.