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It was a near thing, this. I almost didn’t have a book to review this week. I wanted an America-themed book since we just had Independence Day here in the USA. But until this past Monday, I couldn’t find anything short enough that I would have any hope of reviewing in time.

To the rescue rode Zachary Shatzer, on a horse that was white, but also red and blue. Or something like that. But you all know by now that I always love to read a Shatzer book, and when I saw his latest was a parody of political thrillers, a genre near and dear to me, you can well imagine my delight.

Puppet Dance features all the tropes we expect of thrillers: conspiracies, assassins, double-crosses and backstabbing. Except instead of being done seriously, it’s played for laughs. The president is a simpleton elected solely for his good looks. The vice-president has to juggle his Machiavellian plans for world domination with mending his relationship with his goth teenage daughter. And the assassin, who prides himself as a ruthless and efficient killing machine, is actually a bit of a bumbling buffoon; for example, when he drops his rifle and ammunition on the way to prepare for a job, and his forced to eat one of the bullets to conceal it from bystanders.

The plot is basically a power struggle between aforementioned vice-president and the director of the CIA, both of whom are vying to be the true power behind the throne of the empty-headed president. The only person capable of saving America–indeed, seemingly the only person capable of doing anything well–is Agent Dennings of the Secret Service, who saves the VP’s life at a hopscotch convention.

From there, it’s off into a madcap labyrinth of whimsy and silliness as only Shatzer can deliver. I could try to summarize it all, but really, the whole point of the thing is the humorous way the story is told.

Which is not to say there isn’t a deeper reading that can be made. What are literary critics for, if not to systematically suck the joy out of any work of fiction by imagining things in it that the author never intended? This, dear readers, is my speciality.

You can read a fairly scathing critique of 21st-century culture in the works of Shatzer. For example, the way Vice President Beanstar slowly builds a coalition of supporters by pandering to fans of various activities, celebrities, franchises and the like, could be read as a comment on consumerism; as people who fanatically (and remember always the word “fan” is short for “fanatic”) build their entire identity around some piece of pop ephemera are easily manipulated to advance the goals of a malevolent politician.

Or again, when Agent Dennings goes undercover as a television star, but the effort fails because people have so thoroughly conflated the actress with the character she portrays that they are unwilling to even speak to her. Much of Shatzer’s humor is derived from characters who have completely dedicated themselves to raising trivial issues to the level of zealous idolatry. Something that will be familiar to anyone who has ever been on the internet.

These are interesting themes, and no doubt a healthy corpus of literary criticism could be derived from them. However, that would just miss out on the real fun of Shatzer, which is basically that in his world, even the villains are basically good, if rather eccentric, and everything can always be resolved in a pleasingly amusing fashion.

Shatzer, like Wodehouse, is fundamentally optimistic, and this shows through in all his works. Even when he is making fun of something, you can always sense the affection at the heart of it. So, in these troubled times, when one can be forgiven for checking a little anxiously, and a little more frequently than usual, whether that star-spangled banner does indeed yet wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave, I think I’ll give the last word to Shatzer. Or rather, to Agent Dennings, the embodiment of humble competence in a world run by madmen, narcissists, and criminals:

It was a strange thing, she mused, that America could manage to be such a wonderful place when led by people like this. And it was wonderful, she had no doubts about that. The ideas on which it was based: freedom, equality, and opportunity, though never fully and perfectly realized, had also never been crushed by the ceaseless parade of corruption, morons, and corrupt morons at the highest levels of power. An incredible feat, when you thought about it. 

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I am not quite sure when I became convinced that Zachary Shatzer is a genius. Certainly, once I read The Beach Wizard, I knew I was reading the work of one of the great comic novelists of our time. But maybe I knew it even before that; it’s hard to remember exactly. In any case, a genius he is, and that is why I was delighted to pick up his latest novella, Dog Wearing a Bowler Hat.

The story is a straightforward one: a young man named Wilkins goes to his social club one day to find a new artwork added to the club’s decor: a painting of a dog wearing a bowler hat. Wilkins is largely indifferent to the piece, but his friends at the club have strong feelings about it. Some think it’s a masterpiece, others despise it.

Wilkins thinks little of it at first, until differences of opinion begin to tear the club apart. Friendships are ended by disagreements about the hat-wearing dog. The division ramps up further and further, escalating into a conflict that seems unimaginable, forcing poor Wilkins, with his lack of any strong feelings on the matter whatsoever, into making increasingly difficult choices.

So, that’s the story in a nutshell. Seems simple enough, right?

Heh, well, you probably know whenever I say that, I’m about to launch into one of my rambling disquisitions. Admit it, deep down in places that you don’t talk about at parties, you want me doing this sort of thing.

Mark Paxson and I have observed there’s this pattern of book hype where, (for example) Stephen King will have a new book coming out and early reviews will say, “It’s Stephen King like you’ve never seen him before!” Then, one reads the book, and finds that it is, in fact, Stephen King almost exactly as you have always seen him. Which is not a criticism of King. After all, most people buy a book by Stephen King expecting to get a Stephen King book. No; it’s just a criticism of critics, who build a book up to be something it’s not.

All of which is to say I hesitated before saying, “This is Zachary Shatzer like you’ve never seen him before!” Was I doing the very thing of which I accuse others, and describing it as something it isn’t?

It is a very funny book, to be sure, but then all Shatzer’s books are funny. That alone isn’t enough to say it is breaking new ground for him. It is also insightful, but The Beach Wizard and The Hero and the Tyrant are insightful too. That’s not what’s novel in this novella.

I finally decided that why I think this book is something different than that to which we Shatzer-heads have heretofore become accustomed: it has an allegorical quality, almost like a fable, that is not found in his other works.

Now, there is nothing I would hate more than becoming one of those people who sees symbolism everywhere. Figuring out what the green light across the bay stands for is just not my thing. And I’m not suggesting that this story must be read allegorically, or that Shatzer necessarily intended for it to be. To paraphrase Hemingway’s take on The Old Man and the Sea: “The dog is a dog. The bowler hat is a bowler hat.”

But, it is the way it is presented, the way this trivial and even absurd picture drives people into a kind of madness, that has something to say about politics, about culture, and–yes, I’ll even go there–about human nature itself.

I spend my free time as an amateur critic on the internet. I’ve seen takes you people wouldn’t believe. To this day, there are arguments on Twitter about a sci-fi movie that came out almost seven years ago and whether it is a moving and transcendent work of cinematic genius or a loathsome travesty that defames all that is noble and good in the world. As I feel about this movie pretty much like Wilkins feels about the painting, I can certainly relate to him.

Over and over, this pattern is repeated; of people fighting over things that are, at bottom, unimportant and silly. It is my fervent hope that the words “Dog with a Bowler Hat” may become a byword, a meme, which signifies when something has inspired more passion that it deserves. Shatzer’s accomplishments are many, but here may be his most amazing feat yet: he has coined a phrase which can be used to stop pointless arguments before they begin, an anti-polarization pill gilded with his usual whimsical wit.

But for it to work, of course, people need to read the book. And that, my friend, is where you come in. I know I’m constantly ordering you to read books, and I suppose you get tired of it. It must feel like I do everything but shove the books in front of you, saying “it’ll change your life, I swear,” like Natalie Portman in Garden State. But I really mean it; this one is something special. Do yourself a favor and read it.

UPDATE: the book is free on Kindle today, 4/19. All the more reason to get it!

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I heard about this book from Lydia Schoch’s review and I knew right away that I had to read it. Originally, I thought I would wait until Halloween season to review it, but then I thought, “Zis is Ruined Chapel! It is alvays Halloween here!” And besides, it’s such a delightful book, I couldn’t wait to share it with you all.

It tells the story of a ghost named Lazarus Bently, who is helping an amateur ghost out with a difficult assignment: haunting a woman named Maisie. Maisie’s artistic temperament makes her immune or oblivious to most of the standard tropes associated with hauntings: objects being hurled through the air, threatening messages on the walls etc. have no effect on her. What is a ghost to do?

Since this is a short story, I can’t say too much about how it all develops, or I’d risk giving it away. But, I can say that the author packs a lot of humor and clever ideas into a very short space. It’s like a supernatural version of “The Odd Couple,” with plenty of witty lines. I especially liked the idea that the ghosts feed off of fear, and when they need a quick hit, they drop in on people who are watching the news.

You might be saying, “But it’s only 18 pages long! Can it really be worth it?” Comes the reply: yes, it can. I read it in one evening and found myself chuckling the whole time. Sure, it’s a short read, but every minute spent reading it is fun, and that’s what matters.

Ghosted is a perfect fun supernatural story to read when you want a good laugh. As usual, Lydia is right on the money!

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Imagine a series about a school for sorcerers. Imagine that it involves an evil sorcerer, returned from a death-like state by his cult of followers. Now imagine that this sorcerer takes over the sorcerer school, and starts using it to instruct young magically-inclined persons in the ways of dark magic.

But! All is not lost. For there is a hero, chosen by prophecy, to fight back against the evil wizard and his minions.

This is of course a perfectly screwball premise for a zany comedy, and who better than Zachary Shatzer to do such a silly concept justice?  This is the third book in Shatzer’s Sorcerers series, and perhaps the craziest one yet. By this point, the Incompetent Hero’s penchant for triumphing through his own stupidity has become so well-known that various factions actively try to to harness it for their own ends. And he rarely disappoints; bumbling his way through multiple assassination attempts, barracuda attacks, and other assorted misfortunes that will come as no surprise to readers of the first two books.

Last year, I reviewed the book The Stench of Honolulu by Jack Handey, which Shatzer considers the funniest book he has ever read. I realize now that his Sorcerers series is very much in the same vein, with much of the comedy coming from the self-absorbed and careless main character spreading chaos wherever he goes.

I don’t know if Shatzer plans to write more in this series, but if he plans to keep it to a convenient trilogy form, then I must say that I think this one ends in a way that seems entirely appropriate for the buffoonish protagonist. After his more ambitious The Hero and The Tyrant, this volume is like a light-hearted satyr play. The premise I outlined above might not work as (for example) the culmination of a serious and sprawling story, but as a wacky comedy, it is just the ticket.

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If you don’t know by now that I’m a fan of Adam Bertocci’s fiction… well, I guess you’ll just have to read this review, and then you will.

Crappy Valentine’s Day is about a young woman in New York City who just wants to have a nice day. Not a romance or anything; just a pleasant day at home. But those hopes are dashed when her boss calls and asks her to come into the office to run a focus group session. As fate would have it, it’s for a dating service.

What follows is an interesting discussion of the different expectations men and women have for each other, as well as Bertocci’s hallmark, the emptiness of the careers most millennials find themselves in.

But Becca’s day doesn’t end there; not by a long shot. Valentine’s Day still has some surprises in store for her, and not just because of her cat, Boots, either.

This story is like a companion piece to Bertocci’s wonderful Samantha, 25, on October 31. That one is a more in-depth treatment of a young millennial adrift in the city, (as well as a cat with an attitude) but this book also has plenty of his trademark wit and charm.

If you haven’t read any Bertocci, despite my prior exhortations, then this is a good introduction to his style. And if you are a devoted Bertocci-head like me, this feels like a visit from an old friend. Either way, I recommend it.

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In my undergraduate poli sci classes, they told us that Aristotle defined three forms of government: rule by the one, rule by the few, and rule by the many. Of these, each came in good and bad flavors, so the good version of rule by the one is “monarchy” and the bad version is “tyranny.”

As the title suggests, Zachary Shatzer’s latest comic novel concerns itself with the latter, and we are quickly introduced to the land of Kragolia, which is ruled with an iron fist by the Grimheart family.

But within a few pages, the reigning Dictator and his eldest son perish in the course of terrorizing the population, and the role of dictator falls to Trin, the younger son, who is a mild lad with no appetite for cruelty. However, he is quickly urged on to more tyrannical acts by the senior advisor to the dictator, Mysborn.

Ah, Mysborn! One of the most interesting characters in the story, because he is a classic archetype from history. From Michael Psellus to Talleyrand, the figure of the clever, manipulative advisor is a familiar one. For fictional equivalents, see Grima Wormtongue or Sir Humphrey Appleby.  Mysborn is a man who uses deceit and manipulation to get his way.

At first, he thinks he’ll easily have his way with the soft-hearted Trin, but the reluctant dictator refuses to oppress the people. Eventually, he decides to sneak out of the castle, along with his faithful manservant Malcolm, and see the kingdom for himself.

Meanwhile, the people of Kragolia, led by a woman named Gail, are contemplating rebellion against the oppressive regime. But they’re not very optimistic about their chances, since the military might of the Empire seems overwhelming. That is, until a mysterious hero named Eric Strongbow appears, and rallies the resistance with his bravery, not to mention his good looks. He looks like “a conquering hero, but not the kind of conquering hero who had let his victories go to his head. No, his appearance was that of an easygoing sort of conquering hero. The kind you could make a mild joke about without fear that he would be obliged to slice open your torso to restore his sense of honor.”

I have to say it: men, what’s stopping you from looking like this?

As with all his books, Shatzer’s humorous prose sparkles throughout, and I love the style of the narration. It’s a sort of distant third-person tale, with occasional reminders that we are, in fact, being told a story, as the omniscient narrator makes frequent parenthetical asides. This style of storytelling has fallen out of favor lately, and I think it’s high time it made a comeback.

The thing that makes this book great, right up there with Shatzer’s wonderful Beach Wizard, is that it has a real emotional core to it. The scenes with Trin and his mother are perhaps the most poignant, although there are several others. While the book has a jolly tone, Shatzer is never afraid to shy away from moments of true emotion, and that gives it a certain weight that so many humorous stories lack.

For this is more than just a silly comedic adventure. It is also a commentary on government. Dare I say, it’s a kind of mirror for princes, meant to instruct on the virtues that make a hero and warn against the vices that make a tyrant. The contrast between the cruelty of Mysborn and the Grimheart regime vs. the heroism of Eric Strongbow is the distillation of the difference between Aristotle’s good and bad forms of government.

This is a wonderful story. On Twitter, I said it was “like if P.G. Wodehouse wrote fantasy,” and I’m hard-pressed to think of higher praise. Shatzer is a national treasure. (Admittedly, I don’t know what nation he resides in, but whichever one it is, he’s a treasure of it.) And I wish like anything I could persuade more people to read his books.

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What can I say about Shatzer’s works that I haven’t said already? Well, at a minimum, he’s prolific. This is the fifth book of his that I’ve reviewed this year, and it contains all the elements I’ve come to enjoy in his work: zany magical mishaps, oddball characters, and usually at least one book-within-a-book.

Actually, The Cowboy Sorcerer itself started out as a book-within-a-book. The title is referenced in Shatzer’s Sorcerers Wanted. In my review of that volume, I desperately wished that it was a real book, and now ta-da! It is. Sometimes wishes do come true. Noah Goats said that books lead on to books, and that certainly is the case with Shatzer’s rapidly-expanding oeuvre.

The Cowboy Sorcerer is in some ways an echo of some of Shatzer’s other great characters. There’s more than a little of Ebbius from The Beach Wizard in the stoic sorcerer who arrives in the town of Destiny’s Crack, searching for a vampire. The way Shatzer riffs on these concepts in different ways throughout his books is one of the pleasures of reading his work. He’s like Wodehouse in that respect; similar situations and characters recur, but we never get tired of reading about them, because of the light and entertaining way he tells the story.

If you’ve already been reading Shatzer, then you probably already picked this book up the second you saw it existed, and don’t need any further convincing. But if you are new to his books, then this is as good an introduction as any.

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Zachary Shatzer recommended this book to me. He called it the funniest book he’s ever read. Well, when the author of some of the most gut-bustingly laugh-out-loud funny books around says something like that, you pay attention, no? So naturally, I had to get myself a copy.

It lived up to Shatzer’s billing. Indeed, the style of humor is much the same as his, though maybe a bit darker and raunchier, skewing more towards a hard PG-13. Still the dominant feeling is one of utter absurdity. Begin with the title: “the stench of Honolulu”. Since when does Honolulu have a stench? Well, in this book, Honolulu is depicted as a horrible place, decrepit and filthy.

Of course, the narrator is far from reliable. A strange, cowardly, narcissistic and paranoid individual, he is forced to accompany his “friend”–using the term loosely–on a quest to find a golden monkey statue said to be in the Hawaiian islands.

The book continues in this vein, with each escapade more bizarre than the last, including recurring violent yet inexplicably non-lethal encounters with a scientist who our narrator decides is evil. This is one of many running gags that just get funnier as the story goes on.

I could go on and on describing all the madcap episodes that form the bizarre journey, but honestly, you’re better off just reading the book. The hardest thing about reviewing a comedy, I find, is that it’s really impossible to explain why something is funny. You either get it or you don’t. Some people won’t get this, either, and that’s okay. But those who do get it are in for a zany and weird and hilarious ride. I’m very grateful to Mr. Shatzer for the recommendation.

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This is a mystery about a detective tracking down a clown who is scheduled to perform at a local boy’s birthday party. The clown, who is also the boy’s uncle, has suddenly vanished with no explanation, and the boy hires Detective McKeever to find him.

Of course, Detective McKeever is only 8 years old, so this makes it hard for her to conduct an investigation. But she’s resourceful and plucky and, like any kid, doesn’t know any better. So, naturally, she finds herself involved in all sorts of comic misadventures, from infiltrating clown meetings to spying on cheating air hockey players. It’s full of all the zaniness we’ve come to expect from Shatzer’s books.

What really makes the story work is McKeever’s seriousness and her annoyance at the refusal of adults to ever take her seriously, which as often as not she turns to her advantage. It’s a fun story that captures how the world seems to a kid.

Remember McGorgol and Hockney at the Guano Island Hotel? That book was a fun take-off on mystery tropes with bird detectives. There’s something similar going on here, with kids acting out the roles of a noir mystery. Having incongruous characters enacting a familiar set of tropes is a good recipe for comedy, and Shatzer, master of humor that he is, uses it well.

Devoted Shatzer fans, of which I am one, and hopefully I’ve managed to persuade a few more, will no doubt enjoy this latest addition to his body of work.

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Come with me, and together we shall flee from this humdrum world of endless reboots and sequels, of the same petty outrages and tired memes of a worn-out culture. Let us escape instead into the pages of Mr. Shatzer’s new collection of stories.

Here we will find a mysterious man, in equal parts whimsical and sinister; much as if Willy Wonka formed a partnership with Cooger & Dark. Here also we find the misadventures of a man called Crumley, and of Melville’s Scrivener, reimagined as a tough cop working the mean streets.

Here, now, we see the mad onion dip thief who recounts his strange proclivity in excruciating detail, and here a spy, obsessed with hot dogs, and here a cyberpunk dystopian tale of a boy and his squirrel.

Do these things sound strange to you? I bet they do. They should. Our world is a strange one best filtered, as it is by Shatzer, through the lens of humor. The humor of the absurd, the bizarre, and the ridiculous.

The best books, I heard someone say once, are like windows into the universe that exists within the author’s brain. Every brain holds a universe, but alas, we can only really experience the one that exists in our own. In that sense, we might as well already be in the pods as depicted in The Matrix. But art gives us a glimpse at what goes on in other brains, and the patterns that run through Shatzer’s work echo other books of his. There’s a little of the Beach Wizard in Cal, the man who runs a mysterious diner, and a little of Percival Pettletwixt in Cornelius Mysterious.

How Shatzer manages to be so effortlessly, and unselfconsciously, funny is something I still can’t quite understand. For instance, in one story, passing reference is made to fires started by a character called “Howard Arson, a local moron.”

This is hilarious. I laughed out loud. Why is this so funny? I do not know. If I knew, perhaps I’d be as funny as Shatzer. But I’m not.

Yes, all told, I recommend this book to anyone and everyone who enjoys a good funny story. It’s wild and zany and goofy and bizarre, and I enjoyed each and every story, and when I had finished, I could only wish there were more.