Book Review: Five Shots and a Funeral

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

Five Shots and a Funeral     Amazon US PB Amazon Canada PB
Dashiell Loveless , Tom Fassbender , Jim Pascoe
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Humorous
Series: Ben Drake
Uglytown, Jan 2000, 278 pp.

This is a short story collection written by the fictional “pulp artifact” Dashiell Loveless. Each of the five-stories can stand-alone yet all of them interrelate as it follows the exploits of Testacy City, Nevada private investigator Benjamin Drake.

All five tales are entertaining and will remind the audience of the golden (more like black and white) days of the pulp fiction novel of the late 1930’s-1940’s. Drake is a wonderful character who is a throw back to those glory days of Marlowe and Spade. The authors (Tom Fassbender and Jim Pascoe) and the illustrator Paul Pope seem to have had fun paying homage while satirizing the mystery genre’s legendary authors (such as Hammett) and their great detectives. Anyone who enjoys hard-boiled detective stories with a wink and a nod to the classics sleuths will want to also read the authors’ previous book BY THE BALLS.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner