The Wheel of Doll

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And then the creative impulses. I have had an odd career, and it's lasted a pretty long time, thankfully. It began in 1989 with my first book [ I Pass Like Night], which was very much an homage to Hubert Selby and all sorts of different influences. I would often make things based on what I was absorbing at the time to make a living and pay the rent in New York. Writing novels never really paid the rent, of course. So I would teach at night, but then I would also perform, which would bring in some money. Or I would do journalism, and that would bring in some money. That was even how I ended up in TV, just sort of seeking to pay the rent and at the same time wanting to make things. The character of Happy is excellent, ex-military, ex-cop, ex-PI, but still working. He is broken both inside and out, but still has a sense of justice so when he has the chance to save Ines once again, he is on the case. It is not until you see Happy’s relationship with Ines that you realise how messed up he is.His love for her seems to be based in the fact that she is the one person more broken than he is. As the story progresses, Happy reveals how bad things have gotten. His sense of balance fails completely, and you have a character driven by a form of madness, doing what it takes; drugs, violence, murder. It does feel in places that as an unfit man in his 50s, Happy may be pushing his body too far, but the book takes on a HI octane, technicolour tone unlike any PI book you have read. Jonathan Ames is the author of the books The Double Life is Twice As Good, I Pass Like Night, The Extra Man, What's Not to Love?, My Less Than Secret Life, Wake Up, Sir!, I Love You More Than You Know, and The Alcoholic (a graphic novel illustrated by Dean Haspiel). He is the editor of Sexual Metamorphosis: An Anthology of Transsexual Memoirs. Doll is an ex-detective, now working at being a private investigator. An old friend looks him up and wants Doll to donate one of his kidneys to him. Doll doesn't make a decision .. mainly because his old friend shows up at his house, with a bullet in his stomach. The book opens on ‘just another nice cold Los Angeles day’ in January 2020 (there is a reference further on in the book to a ‘terrible flu’ they’re talking about on TV). Doll, working in an office that’s ‘shaped like a coffin, long and narrow’, welcomes a new client, Mary DeAngelo, who needs help tracing her mother, a homeless drug addict who has ended up in Olympia, Washington. The mother, as DeAngelo proceeds to reveal, is one Ines Candle, a former girlfriend of Doll’s who disappeared from his life thirteen years previously after he found her lying in a bathtub with her wrists slit.

In short, the plot is about a private investigator, formerly of the LAPD, who is propelled on the journey this book chronicles when an old friend shows up on his porch with a bullet in his gut.While the macabre seriousness of the crimes and the narrator’s good-nature and sardonic humor might seem to be at odds, Ames makes it work through assured plotting, superb local color, and excellent prose. Readers will happily root for Doll, a good detective and a decent human, in this often funny and grisly outing."— Publishers Weekly, Starred

Now, in his late-50s, the fiercely loved writer has settled into somewhat of a proper third act (or fourth or fifth, depending on who’s counting): The once-quintessential Brooklyn writer has been living in Los Angeles and writing crime novels about a peculiar man named Happy Doll. From deft and kinky essays to heady Manhattanite fiction to wry TV to brutalist, teeth-clenching noir—Ames has seemingly written it all.feeling that wonderful alchemy of the cannabis and the caffeine- you’re ready to go somewhere but don’t care too much if you make it.” As is traditional, the book begins with a dame in distress: a young woman called Mary DeAngelo who knows that Doll is an old flame of her missing mother, a junkie, and wants him to find her. The investigation is to be bankrolled by her wealthy husband (he tells Doll he earned his money through “the hardest [work there is] … I waited a long time for my parents to die”). Unsurprisingly he has an ulterior motive: in this genre, rich automatically equals corrupt. Happy Doll in book two of a presumably forward moving series, is hired by the daughter of a past flame of his. This woman, Ines, is a known junkie and most likely living on the streets. As Happy gets closer, more thugs appear and beatings commence. Not to be deterred, Happy travels up to the Pacific Northwest and through the streets of the homeless in search of Ines. The plot is not original but perhaps the character's trying to latch onto Buddhism while constantly doing some serious drugs and killing people makes him somewhat more interesting. As much as I love Ames’ novels and comic memoirs, Happy Doll is his most innovative and successful character yet. Fans of aged, semi-hard-boiled, humorous Los Angeles detectives will also enjoy Andy Weinberger’s The Kindness of Strangers.— Brian Kenney

I've always thought of you as a pretty fearless writer. Where do you think you got that from? Was that always there, or was that something you had to learn? The case? A beautiful young woman turns up at the office, wanting to hire Hap to find her missing mother. And her mother just happens to be a woman Doll once loved. You got it - he takes the case and immerses himself into the search. It's hard for me to describe why I like this book so much, it is definitely in my top 10 this year, maybe fighting for number one. But Doll is not without his own demons, as he is a slave to his drug habits such as cocaine. He has experienced his own brutal assaults and scars from his life, and he considers himself an “armchair Buddhist,” He does have a best friend name George, who happens to be a dog. It seems one of his few friends, because Doll does things his way, and barely asks for anyone to help him or understand him.The story slows down a bit in the second act when Doll goes on the obligatory stake-out. I know why it had to happen but that whole section is dull. Doll himself is not that distinctive a character - he’s a basic private detective-type that readers of this genre will have seen before - and, similarly, the story generally is fairly unmemorable. I didn’t dislike it but it doesn’t stand out as remarkable or even remotely new and I don’t expect to remember it for long.

I didn't find a lot of offbeat humor such as was promised in the blurbs but Happy Doll, the non-licensed private investigator, is certainly quirky which I like. Mr. Ames has also written a TV pilot for the HBO network, Bored to Death, and this will be filmed in the fall of 2008. The pilot will star Jason Schwartzman as "Jonathan Ames". Bored to Death was originally a short story by Mr. Ames which was published in McSweeney's #24 (fall 2007).

Customer reviews

The woman is named Mary DeAngelo, and she's looking for her mother Ines Candle. Happy instantly recognizes the mother's name as an ex-lover of his. The last time the couple was together, she barely survived an attempt at suicide. Happy is saddened to learn that her life didn't get better after that. Mary has been estranged from Ines for a while, but recently received a Facebook message that alleges to be from her. Mary's mysterious husband puts up the funds to pay Happy to find Ines. As he embarks on finding her, he's left with more questions than answers. Old wounds will reopen and new ones are sure to follow. You were known as such a New York writer. Did you ever feel a sense of identity crisis when you moved to Los Angeles? I had been reading detective stuff since the 1980s. It first began to rear its head with a short story, “Bored to Death,” which I originally wrote for Esquire. It was supposed to be 5,000 words, but I really got inspired, and the story went to 11,000 words. I thought it was really good. I sent it to the editor, and I don't think he liked it well enough. So I wrote another piece and they also rejected it. I got the kill fee, and then I had this short story I was very happy with because I finally had written my own detective story. Doll begins his one person revenge tour, wanting to find Mary and Hoyt, but it becomes apparent there are those who do not want Doll to find the truth. He gets beaten up, shot and threatened more than many characters in mysteries, but his resilience and quest for the truth, keeps him returning for more. I wrote a lot about this in my novel, The Extra Man, but when I was really into sports coats and dressing this way, it created a fantasy life for me. That I was someone out of a Somerset Maugham or Fitzgerald story. I wanted to live in the past, and dressing like that was a way to live in the past.