GELIGNITE

by William Marshall ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 3, 1977

Hong Kong's Yellowthread Street Station detectives (Hatchet Man, 1976) continue their oddly appetizing potpourri of unstoppable, gruesome crimes (exploding letter bombs this time), East-meets-West culture shocks, and frenetic failures in communication--who's-on-first routines à la Abbott & Costello. This episode's comic highlights are newly-promoted Inspector O'Yee's search--by phone--for a stuffed toucan and Chief Inspector Feiffer's pregnant wife's mounting prepartum hysteria. Meanwhile, the gelignite madman strikes again and again, without much interference from the Yellowthread Streeters, until he unveils his master coup: the desecration of a Chinese cemetery. Noodleheaded plotting and zero detection, but no one else in crime writes quite the way that Marshall does--a touch of Gertrude Stein, a dab of P.G. Wodehouse--and, if you don't mind giggles spattered with gore, Yellowthread Street is very much the place to be.

Pub Date: Oct. 3, 1977

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Holt, Rinehart & Winston

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1977

Categories: FICTION