KINKY FRIEDMAN

Dylan Weinberg, an eleven-year-old boy with a rare form of autism, is missing. A stock market wizard, he can only utter one word, 'Schnay'. Kinky takes the case but he faces a dilemma when Lucky, a cat from his aunt Nancy's Utopia Animal Ranch, also disappears. Kinky decides to put his faith in Village Irregular Steve Rambam, who was trained as both a cop and a rabbi, to help find the kid in New York. Meanwhile, Kinky hightails it to the ranch in Texas, where the only witnesses are a dim-sighted, eighty-year-old lady and a frisky canine named Mr Magoo. Luckily, it seems that Lucky stowed away in the back of Nancy's truck, got spooked by some wolves, and then somehow found his way home. As for Dylan, Kinky has a sinking feeling that Dylan's father, fed up with a mountain of medical bills, may have disposed of his sick son. In fact, Kinky finds him tucked away in a slightly less than Dickensian orphanage where he has been abandoned. It's a double happy ending, and even the great Kinkster is at a loss to explain it. The cat, of course, said nothing.

Alone in his New York loft, the private detective Kinky Friedman reflects on friendship and why all his friends are out of town. Feeling a little melancholy, his mind turns to Stephanie DuPont - very hot but pretty much resistant to all his advances. The phone rings and Kinky''s old contact Hoover from Honolulu is on the blower to report that Kinky''s great friend Mike McGovern has disappeared while in the process of researching and writing his cookbook, Eat, Drink and Be Kinky (now also available from Faber). Our hero files to Hawaii with Miss DuPont, and in a series of farcical wild goose chases Kinky ends up visiting the local museum, where in a room full of ancient relics he stumbles upon a full-size sculpted wooden head that is a dead ringer for McGovern. But what on earth can a bust of an ancient high chief have in common with Kinky''s missing friend?

This is a collection of three humorous detective stories set in and around the country music scene of Greenwich Village, New York, that feature the author as the detective-hero. Friedman other books include "The Kinky Friedman Crime Club" and "More Kinky Friedman".