Noogie’s shine dims pretty quickly.
This slapstick caper novel can’t sustain the energy of its zany setup.
Knipfel (The Buzzing, 2003, etc.) plainly enjoyed himself creating the character of Ned “Noogie” Krapczak, a hapless schlub who somehow amasses a small fortune by skimming from the ATM machines that he services. Reportedly inspired by an actual crime, the novel has some fun with Noogie, who hates his nickname but prefers it to the common mispronunciation of his last name (“Crap Sack”), who lives with his bellowing mother and his Siamese cat, Dillinger, and who has no life beyond the movies that obsess him. One day on his New York rounds, he accidentally misplaces a $20 bill. When it isn’t discovered, he starts to take more and more, until he has stolen almost $5 million without arousing any suspicion from the home office in Fort Lauderdale. At about the 50 page mark, Noogie learns that he’s been discovered, and he and his cat hit the road, abandoning his mother. Unfortunately, Knipfel has no more idea than his protagonist where to head from here, as both Noogie and the reader quickly find themselves “getting a little bored with this ‘on the lam’ business.” Noogie thinks his escape will make his life as exciting as a movie, but nobody appears to be chasing him. Whether out of ineptitude or desperation, he seems to do everything he can to draw the sort of attention that might result in his capture, leaving a $40 tip for a two-buck meal, spinning preposterous stories about his background, trading his van in for one exactly like it (with the same plates), heading for Florida where he knows they’re looking for him. The novel’s second half (following an “intermission” of 16 pages) features a significant plot twist that throws the narrative chronology out of whack and makes the reader care even less about Noogie than before.
Noogie’s shine dims pretty quickly.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-75351-283-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Virgin Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Much will be made of the kinship of Hill and his superstar father, Stephen King, but Hill can stand on his own two feet....
A rock star buys a ghost who chases him from New York to Florida, blood spurting all the way.
Jude Coyne, after a career in the darker reaches of the rock-music world, lives in upstate New York with Georgia, the latest in a succession of young pierced admirers he calls by the states of their birth. Georgia’s predecessor, Florida, is at the heart of the troubles that arrive when Coyne answers an ad offering a ghost, something special to add to his collection of creepy items that includes a Mexican snuff film. The ghost inhabits a garish suit of clothes that arrives in a heart-shaped box, and the situation is a set-up. Knowing Coyne’s taste for the weird, Florida’s sister has inveigled him into buying the soul of her and Florida’s stupendously evil stepfather, Craddock, a stinker who learned a lot of very bad magic as a soldier in Vietnam. The motive is the apparent suicide of Florida, who Coyne sent home after one too many bouts of depression. Craddock’s ghost immediately gets into Coyne’s head, urging him to murder Georgia and then commit suicide. Coyne resists, but the bad vibes are too much for his gay personal assistant, who flees the farm and hangs himself. Craddock persists in his attack on Coyne, using a ghostly truck as his assault vehicle. Lesser rock stars would have capitulated early on, but Georgia turns out to be full of spunk, and Coyne’s German Shepherds are fierce protectors who the ghost greatly fears. To get rid of Craddock, Coyne figures he will have to go to Florida to find out just what did happen to make that ghost such an abusive spirit.
Much will be made of the kinship of Hill and his superstar father, Stephen King, but Hill can stand on his own two feet. He’s got horror down pat, and his debut is hair-raising fun.Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2007
ISBN: 0-06-114793-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2007
A rollicking first novel from British journalist Hornby that manages to make antic hay of a young (barely) man's hopeless resolve not to come of age. Rob Fleming is the sort of precocious loser whose life has gone so unaccountably wrong that some deep romantic grief must be invoked to explain it. ``The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking,'' according to Rob, ``are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don't know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they've been listening to the sad songs longer than they've been living the unhappy lives.'' As a case in point, the 35-year-old Rob not only listens to these songs himself but peddles themas the founder and proprietor of Championship Vinyl, a seedy vintage-record store in a quiet back alley of North London. Business is hardly booming these days, and the shop would have gone under long ago but for Rob's lawyer- girlfriend Laura, who has propped it up time and again with cash from her own very ample pool. Once she dumps Rob, however, everything is suddenly on the verge of collapsefiscally and emotionallyand Rob is forced to ask himself how he landed in such a mess. Naturally, he has no idea, so he proceeds to look up his ex-girlfriendsall the way back to high schooland ask them why things never worked out. As a pilgrimage, Rob's quest bears more resemblance to Monty Python than Chaucer, and his own inability to put two and two together somehow endears him to the very women whose affections he seems least able to requite. Reality bludgeons him in the end, and he succeeds, as the plot is spun, in drawing a few morals that surprise him by their simplicity and point toward a happy endingor at least a second chance. Fast, fun, and remarkably deft: a sharp-edged portrait that manages at once to be vicious, generous, and utterly good-natured.
Pub Date: Sept. 5, 1995
ISBN: 1-57322-016-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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