"It was Christmas Eve and all of the salamis in the window of the Carnegie Deli had been hung with care. …" It's the last week of December, a brooding time of year even for a hip, sardonic country music star turned amateur private detective. When an ex-Texas Jewboys guitarist comes to visit, Kinky's gloom turns to horror: his "housepest" is found savagely murdered in the shower. And then deadly accidents start befalling the other members of the guerilla country-music band…someone is killing the Jewboys of Texas. Aided and obstructed by Ratso, Rambam, McGovern, Dylan, Winnie, Cleve and the rest of the Village Irregulars, and armed only with a cigar and an attitude, Kinky pursues the killer across Manhattan.
Out of print for nearly a decade and never before available in electronic format, Musical Chairs is the fifth of Kinky Friedman's internationally acclaimed mystery novels, republished with a new introduction by the author.
"His irreverent, bawdy and often outrageous adventures are like no others." (San Diego Union-Tribune)
"A surefire cure for the blues." (New York Times)
"Kinky Friedman is a hip hybrid of Groucho Marx and Sam Spade." (Chicago Tribune)
"How is this mystery writer different from all other mystery writers? We don't read him to find out what happens next, we read him to find out how far he will far he will go." (The Washington Post)
"Dear Kinky, I have now read all of your books. More, please. I really need the laughs!" (former President Bill Clinton)
"A true Texas legend." (former President George Bush)
From the Author's Introduction: "Musical Chairs is a book about country music, about life on the road, and about my band the Texas Jewboys, whom some considered to be a crime against God and country, not to mention humanity. The Texas Jewboys performed across America (irritating many Americans, I might add), from 1973 to 1976 when we disbanded and I joined up with Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Review. A country musician gets used to a lot of ups and downs throughout a career. It's a small step from the limo to the gutter. And yet, as Oscar Wilde once noted: 'All of us are lying in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.' I think it's a good thing that Vandam Press has chosen Musical Chairs to reprint for its new Masters of Crime series. ..."
Vandam Press is proud to be able to make this remarkable novel available to Kinky’s old friends and to those readers who are discovering Kinky Friedman for the first time.
