Review: Dead Clown Blues

Dead Clown Blues by R. Daniel Lester
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’ve been interested in this publisher, Shotgun Honey, for a very specific reason: the best noir has always come from second-rate technological publications. The Black Mask stories were literally pulp fiction, magazines printed on low-quality paper and churned out. The noir films of the early 1950s were black-and-white originally not for artistic reasons but because they cost less to make. So it makes sense that somewhere, someone, is doing that contemporary thing as an e-publisher with print-on-demand; it’s a cheap, economical way to get out real books and establish a list. Most of that stuff will be forgettable (which is true of almost every other publisher) but the best should be pretty good. And it might even be where the real cutting edge is happening.

I’m not sure I can call this one cutting edge, but it’s still a lot of fun. It’s an experiment in genre and form, taking the tired P.I.-with-a-bombshell-client trope and seeing if it can still serve. Above all, it’s an experiment in humor, and it works because Lester is a genuinely funny writer. I read this in the wake of a real master, James Crumley, so my standards were set high. Even with that, though, I found Lester signaling his sense of the genre with skill. I always knew where things were headed – a good thing – yet I also found myself enjoying the whodunit side of the affair. And, when that faded, I found a crisp and funny one-liner every few pages, clever enough to make me laugh aloud.

The story is just what the title suggests. Our protagonist inadvertently contributes to a drunken binge by a one-time circus clown, and that pulls him into a generation-old mystery around a circus, some lost Prohibition profits, and a gang of clown-thugs. Yes, it’s silly, but that doesn’t make it stale. Lester is quick-witted enough to keep things going. He keeps things short (this is really a novella), and he wraps it all up in a surprisingly satisfactory way.

[SPOILER] I like the way he makes the bombshell circus owner into the ultimate criminal powerhouse (even if her backstory of being abused by her father seems a bit dark for the otherwise persistently playful tone), and I like even more the way he has his main character end up compensated for his trouble by the gift of a tow truck and an unrequested new profession. This is a guy who’s been pushed around all his life; he doesn’t have the raw stuff to be a detective. It fits everything nicely – and cleverly – to have him settle into a different kind of seedy profession.

I certainly enjoyed this, but it doesn’t yet answer my question about Shotgun Honey. This is a promising start since it’s a work rooted in cleverness and fun. I’d like to see more to get a sense of the range these guys are bringing out and to see whether Lester is alone in being a solid and promising writer or whether he’s all alone in the stable.

Don’t be afraid to give this one a shot. It’s entirely fun – a kind of 1950s dress-up with the sensibility of a 21st century hipster-comedian – and it’s left me hungry for more.


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