Kinky Friedman_7 Titles (Various) EPUB+MOBI

"The Kinkster is back and in top supersleuth form." "In Armadillos & Old Lace, the hip, witty, cosmically cryptic poet returns to once again ponder the imponderables and disentangle a mystery or two, and this time he's temporarily forsaking the mean streets of Manhattan for his old Texas stomping grounds." "When Kinky Friedman decides it's time to take a break from big-city murder and mayhem, he transports himself and his cat to Texas to get back to his roots, to commune with his dad, to play with his pet armadillo, and to blow the city soot from his fevered brain." "Kinky arrives at his family's combination ranch/summer camp for boys and girls to find urgent messages from Pat Knox, the local justice of the peace (who got that job by beating Kinky in what clearly had to have been a rigged election). It seems Her Honor is a tad concerned that little old ladies in the area are dropping dead at an alarming rate. Fearing something foul is afoot, she persuades Kinky to undertake some sleuthing." "Undaunted by the thought of running up against the toughest lady sheriff in Texas and only a little perturbed by a mass of swarming bees, the Kinkster takes off in his talking car to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Several bunches of yellow roses and a faded photograph taken many years ago of ten pretty girls dressed in white and ready for the cotillion are just the clues Kinky needs to finally unravel a devious scheme of revenge for personal wrongs and social snobbery." "A colorful Texas story of the cosmic variety, Armadillos & Old Lace is Kinky Friedman at his dead-level best, mixing his irresistible irreverence with a really great mystery."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved



It's a Christmas tale only a man called Kinky could tell.

King Jonjo Mayo the First is in a bind. Every Christmas, he commissions an artist to paint a traditional nativity scene to be dramatically revealed after midnight mass. This year, though, the date is mere weeks away, and he still has not yet found his painter. The king decides to take a chance on a peculiar, mute boy whose artistic genius and clairvoyance are rumored throughout the kingdom. He sends three valiant, if begrudging, knights to seek out the boy in the remote countryside. Finally, they find Benjamin -- and he is, indeed, peculiar. Nobody knows if the child is up to the task, but the king's Christmas tradition -- and Benjamin himself -- might just be saved by a Christmas miracle that comes in the form of a very special pig -- who is rather peculiar herself.



Kinky Friedman, the original Texas Jewboy, takes us on a rollicking, rock-and-rolling tour of his favorite city: Austin.Maybe you want to know which restaurant President Bush rates as his favorite Austin burger joint. Or maybe you want a glimpse of Willie Nelson’s home life (hint: Willie plays a lot of golf). Perhaps you want to get the best view of the Mexican free-tail bats as they make their nightly flights to and from the Congress Avenue Bridge. Or maybe you’re itching to learn the history of a city that birthed Janis Joplin, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and countless other music legends. It’s all here in The Great Psychedelic Armadillo Picnic, the slightly insane, amazingly practical, and totally kick-ass guide to the coolest city in Texas by none other than Kinky Friedman.This ain’t no ordinary travel guide, neither. “Like most other busy cities these days, Austin is not very effectively traversed by foot,” Kinky explains. “You must understand that ‘a walk in Austin’ is primarily a spiritual sort of thing.” As might be expected from this politically incorrect country-singer-turned-bestselling-mystery-author, the Kinkster’s tour includes a bunch of stuff you won’t ?nd in a Frommer’s guide, from descriptions of Austin’s notable trees and directions to skinny-dipping sites to lists of haunted places and quizzes and puzzles. So put on your cowboy hat and your brontosaurus-foreskin boots and head down south with the only book you need to get to the big heart of this great city.



Friedman sends a slumping, unfulfilled novelist off on a wild criminal adventure with a couple of con artists in his latest, an engaging but erratic caper novel that begins when mid-career fiction writer Walter Snow meets the woman of his dreams, Clyde Potts, at a bank in Manhattan. Potts already has a companion, an oddball named Fox Harris who accompanies Clyde on her various criminal ventures, and the pair quickly take advantage of Snow's lust for Potts to convince him to play a role in a smalltime con at a New York bar. Their next escapade takes them to a mental hospital, where they liberate an African-American acquaintance who believes himself to be the king of an African country. The criminal stakes go up when Potts manages to steal Donald Trump's credit card number, and the trio throws a lavish party for the homeless at a New York shelter, but the plotting turns downright bizarre when Potts and Harris sabotage a major coffee cafe after the company that owns the chain evicts the owner of a dive bar called the Unicorn. Friedman's usual off-kilter charm prevails throughout, particularly in the characterization of Snow, a sincere but befuddled writer who uses his lust for Potts to overcome a continuing case of writer's block. Potts and Harris have their endearing moments, but the criminal subplots range from the solidly effective to the over-the-top wacky, particularly the coffee caper, which is designated "Operation Diarrhea" and involves the trio adding a mix of diabolical chemicals to the local brew.



Alfred Hitchcock's classic film Rear Window gets an affectionate kick in the butt in this homage from master crime writer, philosopher, and equal-opportunity offender Kinky Friedman.

It's a case of malaria versus murder when private dick extraordinaire Kinky Friedman comes down with a tropical disease, in the jungle known as New York City, and is confined to his loft on Vandam Street in lower Manhattan, a prisoner in his own home with only his cat and black puppet head as company (neither of whom are great conversationalists).
With little to do but stare out the window in between bedridden bouts of fever and hallucinations, Kinky calls on assistance from the stalwart Village Irregulars, who proceed to dish out their own uniquely skewed brand of tea and sympathy, turning the loft into a virtual Mardi Gras of confusion and drunken debauchery.
Suffering almost as much from company overload as from his fever, Kinky welcomes a rare moment of calm as he finds himself once again alone in his loft. Resuming his position at the kitchen window, he spots a pretty young woman in an apartment across the street. What he hopes might be titillating turns terrifying, however, as a man joins the woman and proceeds to attack her. Sure that he's witnessed a crime, Kinky calls in the cops, but, upon investigating his claim, they can find neither a victim nor an apartment across the street. In addition, no one else saw or heard anything that would ndicate a crime had taken place. Was it foul play or merely a fevered dream?
Convinced that their friend is about to slip off into the land of eternal slumber, the Village Irregulars increase their vigilance and in the process raise the Kinkster's irritability level to an all-time high. Not to be deterred, however, Kinky sticks to his story and is rewarded when a few days later he sees the man in the apartment again, but this time with a gun.
Outrageous, audacious, and ingeniously crafted, The Prisoner of Vandam Street is vintage Kinky: irreverent, clever, and full of the hardened philosophy and mordant wit that has earned him a vast and devoted readership. But what more would you expect from the writer The New York Times has called "The world's funniest, bawdiest, and most politically incorrect country music singer turned mystery writer"?



Kinky Friedman has always proven himself to be a master of the offbeat and irreverent, and still manages to pull off a helluva whodunit in the process. Now the Kinkster may have met his match in this superbly crafted, fiendishly clever tale of a murderer who's methodically killing off unsuspecting Manhattan men. Gallingly, all clues point toward Kinky.

Greenwich Village is the setting for Ten Little New Yorkers, a tale of murder and mayhem as only Friedman can warble it and featuring his usual suspects, including Ratso -- Dr. Watson to Kinky's singular Sherlock Holmes. As the clues and bodies pile up and the cops strong-arm Kinky as their man, he has to jump through hoops to find the real killer, all the while maintaining his outrage and, of course, his innocence. The murderer may be someone close to Kinky, which leads to a shocker of an ending that will surely take Kinky devotees completely by surprise.



A purloined feline from a Madison Square Garden cat show is the tip-off to a trail of murders, South American drug lords and a gang war that only Kinky can unravel. But there's more than one way to skin a cat, and Kinky may soon be wishing for nine lives.

Out of print for nearly a decade and never before available in electronic format, When The Cat's Away is the third of Kinky Friedman's internationally acclaimed mystery novels, republished with a new introduction by the author.

"His irreverent, bawdy and often outrageous adventures are like no others." (San Diego Union-Tribune)

"A surefire cure for the blues." (New York Times)

"Kinky Friedman is a hip hybrid of Groucho Marx and Sam Spade." (Chicago Tribune)

"How is this mystery writer different from all other mystery writers? We don't read him to find out what happens next, we read him to find out how far he will far he will go." (The Washington Post)

"Dear Kinky, I have now read all of your books. More, please. I really need the laughs!" (former President Bill Clinton)

"A true Texas legend." (former President George Bush)

"Genuinely funny fiction is rare, but genuinely funny crime fiction is rarer still. All the more reason, therefore, to celebrate..." (Sunday Times)

From the Author's Introduction: "Mysteries with cats as central characters have become so plentiful and predictable that I can't believe that I've written fourteen and a half of them. ... I would also argue that the cat is not so much a character in my novels as it is a conscience. You remember those. A lot of people used to have them in the Sixties. Back then, consciences were really in style. They were almost as popular as cats. ... In When the Cat's Away, the search for Jane Meara's missing cat, Rocky, leads the Kinkster and his companion Ratso on a voyage of self-discovery not to mention traveling down the tawdry trails of murder, drug rings, gang wars, and the New York publishing business. In the real world Jane Meara was once a favorite editor of mine. Rocky was once a favorite cat of Jane's. Rocky was bugled to Jesus about five years ago but she walks these pages undaunted and graceful as ever. That's part of the reason I'm so pleased that Vandam Press has chosen this particular book to reprint as part of its new Masters of Crime series. It proves that some cats, as well as some books, do have nine lives. It also provides a chance, at least in the casino of fiction, for Jane to find Rocky again.. ..."