Skinny Annie Blues - Softcover

Barrett, Neal, Jr.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1575661349 ISBN 13: 9781575661346

Publisher: Kensington Pub Corp, 1997

Synopsis

Receiving a mysterious call that informs him that his father is dead and warns him not to return home, Wiley Moss travels to Texas anyway and must solve a murder while preventing his own death. Reprint.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Imagine Robert Ludlum on laughing gas and you'll have the spirit of Wiley Moss's third adventure (after Pink Vodka Blues and Dead Dog Blues). Wiley's father, who abandoned him 18 years ago, dies in Texas. Smelling a rat and ignoring threats from the menacing cop in charge, Wiley departs his Washington, D.C., home (he's a graphic artist who works for the Smithsonian) for steamy Galveston. Redneck thugs try to run him down; greeters from a strip joint open fire on him. Dad's widow, Grace, gives him a high-speed ride in her car, despite being blind. Annie, a beautiful restaurateur, arouses Wiley's lust but seeks union on a higher plane. Harry Sykes, con artist and car thief, says Wiley's father had a major "enterprise" going. Wiley, remembering that his father gave him a stolen bike for one birthday, assumes a scam. As local lowlifes and the sinister cop pump him for information, try to kill him or pretend to protect him, Wiley gets pushed off a pier, beaten senseless by an obese stripper and entangled with a woman who craves either sex or Milk Duds, whichever is available first. It's all highly implausible, but with the breakneck pace, wacky cast and laugh-out-loud dialogue, that hardly matters.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews:

When the daddy he hasn't seen in 18 years is reported dead, Wiley Moss, who draws bugs for the Smithsonian, abandons his catatonic girlfriend Giselle for Galveston. Even the flight out is marked by Wiley's notable encounters with Chicken Man and the woman with the feet. And when he lands in Texas, where they make new goofballs every year, the locals--from Martin Moss's fetching blind widow Annie and the deaf-mute son Git, who helps her drive, and the Swedish waiter who dreams of past incarnations and gets an option on his next round sooner than he expected, to Skinny Annie (who is not skinny) and the entire staff of the Plum Blossom Palace of Heavenly Delights--roll out a blood-red carpet, complete with bad shellfish and incomplete romantic passes, for him. As monotonously manic as Dead Dog Blues (1994): a year's worth of antic wake-up calls crammed into a single shaggy story. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Kensington Pub Corp
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 1575661349
• ISBN 13: 9781575661346
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 300