#9: The Wheel of Doll by Jonathan Ames

Hard-luck P.I. Happy Doll is back, and looking for a lost love in a very personal case, in Jonathan Ames' The Wheel of Doll.

Doll's search for his drug-addicted former girlfriend, at the behest of the woman's mysterious daughter, takes a number of dark twists and turns.  

Ames is known for writing across genres but focusing on humor and crime; his first in this series, A Man Named Doll, leaned more towards comedy but the sequel veers into darker territory.  The novel definitely has a harder noir edge than its predecessor.

I hope Ames continues to write Happy Doll novels and I would look forward to reading more.

I checked this out from the Morrisson-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana.

#48: A Man Named Doll by Jonathan Ames

 A former cop turned private eye is chucked headfirst into dangerous waters when another retired cop shows up needing a kidney in Jonathan Ames' violent, loopy detective novel A Man Named Doll.

Ames has an eclectic bibliography, but this one veers closer to his comedy-flavored private eye TV show Bored to Death.  

There is plenty of action, and our protagonist is responsible for lots of (accidental) deaths, but the core of it is pretty dark humor.  Doll gets colossally, somewhat accidentally, stoned during long passages of the novel in which he is in immense danger, which is quite funny.

Ames writes a solid detective novel with a lot of twists and turns and a likeable protagonist; it is apparently the first of a new series, and I am looking forward to the next.

I checked this out from the Morrisson-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana and read it very quickly.