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I found Spanking Watson on a sale rack at a local bookstore, and I couldn't help but pick it up. After all, my friend Mark had been raving about Kinky Friedman for ages. So I quickly snatched it up and ran home to tell Mark about my purchase.
"Which one did you get?" he asked in a prompt email response.
"I don't remember. It's something about dancing lesbians," I replied.
"They're all about dancing lesbians," he told me.
So there you have it. Kinky Friedman in a nutshell. He's a "Texas Jewboy"
transplanted in New York, where he lives with a humorless cat in a loft that's conveniently located one floor beneath Winnie Katz's lesbian dance school. And he spends his time smoking cigars, doing shots of whatever's available, and investigating the occasional case.
In Spanking Watson, the Kinkster actually creates his own case. After his ceiling collapses (thanks to Winnie Katz and her dancing lesbians), Kinky writes a death threat to his neighbor in a drunken stupor. He didn't mean to send it, of course, but before he gets the chance to dispose of it properly, his friend Ratso finds it. When Kinky covers it up as a piece of evidence in a new case that he's investigating, Ratso insists that, as Kinky's Dr. Watson, he should see the note.
Ratso's statement gives Kinky an idea. Out of all of the members in his little
circle of friends (which he calls The Village Irregulars), he wonders which of them really makes the best Watson. So he devises a little contest—with a little bit of revenge thrown in on the side. He tells his friends that the note was written to Winnie Katz. The dance instructor is too freaked out to talk about it, though, he tells each of his Watsons, so it's their job to investigate the case—to make pests
of themselves if necessary—in order to figure out who's out to get poor Winnie. So the Watsons eagerly take on the case—unaware of the others' involvement.
Kinky's fake case turns a little more serious, however, when someone breaks
into Winnie's apartment and threatens to kill her. Suddenly, there's more to
Kinky's case than just determining which of his friends should be his real Watson.
Kinky Friedman definitely isn't for everyone. He's pretty crude and politically-incorrect, and he often seems to be rambling about absolutely nothing (not to mention the fact that he's constantly talking to his cat). But if you're one of those people who tend to be random and easily-amused (like me), then Spanking Watson will keep you laughing from beginning to end.
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