John Swartzwelder

Swartzwelder is a comedic genius who wrote some of the best Simpsons episodes sitting by himself in a diner and chain-smoking (when the diner banned smoking, he bought the booth and sat in it at home). You can see it in his first novel too; the whole thing is basically a series of excellent one-liners that surprisingly cohere into a plot, although that really wasn't necessary for the book to be enjoyable.

The jokes are pure and abstract, with almost no political or moral content—the opposite of 'clapter comedy' where the audience claps to indicate that they agree with you.… (mehr)

This is the fifth Frank Burly book by the great John Swartzwelder and they just keep getting funnier.

The Exploding Detective follows the hapless private detective Frank Burly as he purchases a WWII Nazi jet pack in order to differentiate himself from all the other detectives. Obviously, as the title suggests, it doesn't go well for him. Or perhaps, it does go well for Burly, since he survives so many near death experiences.

There's lots of great lines and scenarios from Burly in The Exploding Detective; my favorite seems to be how after his previous travels through the space time continuum, he was able to convince city leaders to bury lots of time capsules so at least he'd be able to eat something when he went to the future again.… (mehr)

As Swartzwelder likes to remind us, he is the writer of 59 episodes of "The Simpsons". As someone who loved "The Simpsons" back when I had the spare time to watch television, I was drawn to the Swartzwelder Frank Burley oeuvre and "Dead Men Scare Me Stupid" is the third Burley book I've read.

For those who have come in late, Frank Burley is a very bad detective who gets caught up in time machines, aliens and the like. In "Dead Men Scare Me Stupid", it's the angry vengeful ghosts of former clients that Burley has to ineptly deal with. At times, the action turns so weird I had trouble following it but there's enough laughs for those who seeking such things in this day and age.… (mehr)