About the Book
A NAME FROM THE PAST
When Mary DeAngelo walks into Happy Doll's office, she brings with her the scent of sandalwood perfume, a whole
lot of cash, and the name of his old flame: Ines Candle.
LURES HAPPY INTO A TRAP
Ines is living rough up in Washington State, and Mary wants her found. Happy hits the streets to track her down, but soon he realizes he has been used. Now somebody is hunting them.
CAN HE FIGHT HIS WAY OUT?
Soon two people are dead, and Happy is in big trouble. But he's been here before and he knows that the only
way to be safe is to get even...
About the Author :
Jonathan Ames is the author of eleven books including Wake Up, Sir!, The Extra Man and You Were Never Really Here, all published by Pushkin Press. He also created the hit HBO comedy Bored to Death, starring Ted Danson, Zach Galifianakis and Jason Schwartzman, as well as Blunt Talk, starring Patrick Stewart. His thriller You Were Never Really Here was adapted for a major Hollywood film by Lynne Ramsay, starring Joaquin Phoenix. The Wheel of Doll is the second book in the series of Happy Doll thrillers that began with A Man Named Doll. Jonathan lives in Los Angeles with his dog Fezzik.
Review :
Praise for A Man Named Doll
I loved this book - it's quirky, edgy, charming, funny and serious, all in one. Very highly recommended
A stiff shot of timeless Hollywood noir, spiked with black humour and leaving a warm glow as it goes down
It's witty and funny and philosophical too... I hope there's more to come from this character
Like the streets of LA at night, Jonathan Ames's sentences are long and fast and can end in something fatal. The template, of course, is Raymond Chandler and especially Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer, with a dash of Chinatown... Its frequently macabre goings on [are] shot through with darkly comic flourishes. Motel, money, murder, madness: it has all you need to keep you happy
Doll is a unique addition to the Southern California crime-fiction scene, and Mr. Ames's new series holds great promise
A combination of dry wit, a satisfyingly high body count, and a nerve-tingling sense of pace make for a terrific seat-of-the-pants read
Exceptional... Assured plotting, superb local color, and excellent prose... Readers will happily root for Doll, a good detective and a decent human, in this often funny and grisly outing
If Elliott Gould's Philip Marlowe landed in the middle of Uncut Gems, you'd have something like Jonathan Ames's A Man Named Doll, which expertly mines the dark humour, mordant wit and dreamy fatalism of great LA noir. And at its centre is a detective with a battered heart and bruised conscience. I'd follow him, and his dog George, anywhere
A Man Named Doll infuses the private eye concept with an unpredictable, vibrant energy, while losing none of the genre's core, noir elements. Ames is a master of blending humor, pathos, and grit - and A Man Named Doll is no exception. A truly modern L.A. noir that still manages to feel timeless and steeped in the classics that came before
A Man Named Doll is so fun and propulsive I didn't just read it in one sitting, I read it in what felt like a single breath. Happy Doll is a tremendously likable main character, and the Los Angeles he inhabits is vibrantly alive in every detail. I hope Jonathan Ames has many more adventures planned for the newest P.I. in town
A Man Named Doll is a smart, sharp, and stylish noir for the modern day. In his cinematic tour of Los Angeles that is both gritty and gorgeous, Ames has delivered a novel that is both current and timeless and has introduced a sleuth who fits all the old traditions while creating his own. Crime at its finest!
Praise for You Were Never Really Here:
Ames is an adept purveyor of the very noir, particularly scenes of violence. He achieves more in less than 100 pages than most crime novels three times the length do
A striking and powerful noir debut that can be consumed in a single sitting... Ames reveals himself here as a stylish thriller writer
Ice-cold modern noir... Really dark. But also fun!
Jonathan Ames' superbly pared-down, striking and powerful noir debut novella, is short, less than 100 pages, brutal and redemptive and packed with corruption, revenge and the very darkest of man's inner demons... After this brilliant and stunningly noir piece of writing, the future direction of his work now seems clear
At less than 100 pages, the read-in-one-sitting tale of traumatised Joe, ex-Marine for hire who still lives with his mother, is as compelling as the violence is sickening. Short, taut and in only the darkest shades of noir
This is modern noir with an old-school style, and what a style... An action-packed story that doesn't waste a word. Gritty, dark and punchy, it's a devour in one sitting read
A dark thriller full of attitude and heart. ... Ames is at his best here, creating a complex and sympathetic character and a detail-rich, believable story that is hard to forget
Hard-boiled PI fiction set in the present doesn't get much better than Ames's gritty and moving second novel featuring L.A. gumshoe Happy Doll... . The Raymond Chandler-esque plot is enhanced by superior prose
Praise for The Wheel Of Doll
Jonathan Ames has always been a fun writer to read... [In The Wheel of Doll] the eponymous gumshoe goes in search of an old love, who may or may not be real, in a case he probably shouldn't have taken in the first place
Buckle up for one hell of a ride in this comic noir caper starring "LA's most eccentric private eye"... Exhibiting Ames' wonderful sense of rhythm and ironic turn of phrase, this filmic thriller fuses offbeat humour with real heart and empathy for America's most vulnerable
When I reviewed Jonathan Ames' crime series opener, A Man Named Doll, I said I would follow his protagonist anywhere he went, no matter how strange the trip...In The Wheel of Doll, the ex-cop turned private investigator...travels through the Pacific Northwest and back to Los Angeles, encountering terrain so dark that repeated bodily injury seems like a respite...The journey takes Doll away from his beloved dog George and through the wreckage of his past and present, annihilating his desire for peace and upping his violence threshold to a near-unsustainable level. The repeated betrayals, shot through with a strain of romanticism, make this second Doll as memorable as the first.
Jonathan Ames's second installment of his Happy Doll series does not disappoint. The Wheel of Doll moves at a breakneck pace, with characters that leave a strong impression, whether they make it out alive or not. Not a book for the faint of heart, The Wheel will satisfy neo-noir thrill-seekers (and dog lovers! George!) and literary fiction fans alike.
A Great Hard Boiled adventure for Detective Happy Doll. Down on his luck he's thrilled when the daughter of an old flame hires him to go looking for her missing mother. But all is not as it seems. Secrets and lies abound as Happy goes looking for trouble. Violent and lyrical this is my best Fall pick.
Detective Happy Doll is back in business, if a bit worse for wear. When a young woman named Mary DeAngelo knocks on his door one night searching for her estranged mother, Doll realizes her mom is a woman, Ines, he once loved, only to have her vanish. Now Ines has made contact with Mary, only to vanish again. Unable to let sleeping dogs lie, Doll takes the case.
This follow-up to A Man Named Doll brings much of the same uncanny energy-raw violence, hard-boiled humor-with a new dash of pathos, as Doll goes on the search for an old flame he believed dead. Ames, as ever, plays with the full range of hardboiled tropes and brings out fresh nuances and something really quite startling in this contemporary PI novel.
Versatile writer Jonathan Ames (novelist, essayist, screenwriter) offers a contemporary noir with graceful writing and mordant humor...the detective's sardonic outlook is as important as the plotting, and the comforts of his narrative voice become even more vital as bodies begin to pile up.
Ames is a great writer. The body count and entertainment quotient are both high
The prose carries a charge without being self-conscious: the weltschmerz is pleasingly plangent; the spiralling mayhem of the plot beautifully orchestrated. Ames respects the sacred formula but riffs on it with wonderful freshness. Happy Doll looks set to rank with Marlowe, Lew Archer and Travis McGee as the hero of an endlessly rereadable series of PI novels
Happy Doll is shaping up to be the perfect hardboiled 21st-century hero
