The Pope of Palm Beach

Reading Pope of Palm Beach

The Pope of Palm Beach.
Bubba graciously loaned me his ARC, and how he got it, I don’t know. “ARC”, Advanced Reading Copy. Authors are notoriously careful with circulated review copies.

The question being, do the books stand up to re-reading? To prepare for the The Pope of Palm Beach, I picked up his previous two, for cheap, on the iBooks thing.

Coconut Cowboy
Clownfish Blues

$1.99 — leads to a sidebar item that I read, originally, that it was the wrong price. Either $0.99 or $2.99 being premium price points, whereas $1.99 is just wrong. But it worked for me. Digital is so much more manageable. I still like to own his books in hardback, though — as seen here.

“The Honda continued south, past a man on a riding lawn mower twirling Philippine fighting sticks, then a strip club called the Church of the New Burning Bush that would soon lose its tax-exempt status.” From the prologue, Page 2.

Sets a tone.

“No disrespect intended, but young boys are the highest-risk group of becoming non-readers, and the Bronte sisters weren’t helping.” Page 96.

Then, Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions positioned as a gateway drug? Sure, that works — satirical position of satire.

But not too clever by half.

Also speaks to an age, and for some of us, perhaps some of Vonnegut’s nature was a gateway drug, only leads to harder stuff, you know.

Some one who molests people who molest nesting sea turtles? Got to love the righteous — although possibly criminally negligent — anti-hero who is really a protagonist.

“The western sprawl of South Florida was like a military campaign: aggressive, coordinated and ruthless.” Page 149.

Reminds me of the sprawl of Austin — the same aggressive, coordinated, and ruthless. Stylistically? Wish he used an Oxford comma.

Have to read the published hardback to see, huh. The trust of an ARC.

But the pacing is even more frenetic ever, and that’s good. Better. Hard to imagine the books getting better, but there is that. Writing as crisp and tingly as can be. Seems, and I’ve read some of his earlier works, but seems that the writing is fresher yet more structured, in away that isn’t obvious. I’ll have to read the hardback to know for sure.

There’s a new, satisfying literary essence where a totally zany plot falls together, echos itself, and does a fifth act rebound.

Good to the last drop.

Forgot there was a piece of Clownfish Blues remarkably prescient about current events. Another previous mention.