Sun 19 Jul 2015
Reviewed by Barry Gardner: TAYLOR McCAFFERTY – Ruffled Feathers.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[7] Comments
TAYLOR McCAFFERTY – Ruffled Feathers. Haskell Blevins #2. Pocket, paperback original, 1992.
This is a silly book. Silly. Haskell Blevins is an ex-Louisville cop (if it’s explained why he left I missed it) who now is the only private detective in his tiny (pop. 1511) home town of Pigeon Fork, Kentucky. How he makes a living there is mercifully unexplained.
He’s hired by the town’s millionaire, a poultry raiser (shades of East Texas’ own Bo Pilgrim), to protect his daughter, for whom he has received a ransom note, but who hasn’t been kidnapped. The chicken magnate, an irascible and thoroughly repulsive sort, is killed, and we’re off.
Off target and off base is what we are. The Blevins books are supposed to lighthearted and amusing. Not. Try dumb. The level of humor is indicated by the fact that the narrator, who nearly always speaks to you in a folksy (it’s to be queasy) but perfectly grammatical manner, four or five times over the course of the book throws in lines (directed to you, the reader) like, “Of course, you’ve got to watch them chickens…” Supposed to reinforce his country image, I guess.
Stupid mystery, stupid characters, and an insult to the intelligence of all with IQs in triple digits. If you think this is funny, ABC sitcoms were made for you.
The Haskell Blevins series —
1. Pet Peeves (1990)
2. Ruffled Feathers (1992)
3. Bed Bugs (1993)
4. Thin Skins (1994)
5. Hanky Panky (1995)
6. Funny Money (2000)
July 19th, 2015 at 8:37 pm
Al Hubin reviewed the first in this series here on this blog about a year ago:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=26101
I’ve also read the first one, and I enjoyed it. I don’t know if I’d go out of my way to recommend it to anybody else, though. Obviously this one struck Barry not the right way at all.
The book is out of print. I wonder why if you would like a copy in New condition from Amazon, it will cost you over $20, including postage.
July 20th, 2015 at 7:01 am
I read the first two (before I read Barry’s review, back in the day) and must have liked the first one enough or I wouldn’t have read the second, would I? But then, I never read the third….
July 20th, 2015 at 12:47 pm
Probably seemed like an interesting concept at the time. Notice there are no titles listed after the one published in 2000, 15 years ago.
July 20th, 2015 at 12:49 pm
Notice also it was 5 years between #5 and #6.
July 20th, 2015 at 4:28 pm
That gap struck me as unusual as well.
July 20th, 2015 at 6:13 pm
I’m living in Pigeon Fork only 300 people smaller. Likely there was no mail delivered for five years.
July 21st, 2015 at 1:30 pm
The titles may be better than the books!