Dirty Laundry, by Paul Thomas

Imagine a scenario: Carl Hiaasen is told that his books are becoming repetitive and unimaginative, so he is sent to New Zealand to regenerate himself. The chrysalis opens and he comes forth as Paul Thomas and writes Dirty Laundry, in the process out-Hiaasening himself. False, of course, for Thomas is a true original, energetic, scintillating and quite mad. And his book is the most amusing, chuckle generating piece of writing to come my way since my last tax balancing sheet. Olsen and Johnson once concocted a film called Hellzapoppin, one of the zaniest movies ever made. Well, this book is its literary equivalent. I devoured it in one gulp, then suffered the indigestion of laughter for a week. It is set in a Babylonian New Zealand that has surely never been conceived of before, and concerns the efforts of one Reggie Sparks to get to the bottom of an apparent suicide that happened some twenty years before the story opens. But forget plot development, time-scales and logical construction, and instead revel in the madcap, slapstick humour of the whole thing. And the good news is that there are two more on the way: Inside Dope and Guerilla Season. Lead me to them.