The Long Drunk

I decided to review this at the request of the author who sent me a free copy. My first impression was that the cover is awful. [Checking recently, I noticed it had been changed.] The book’s description seems to pander to a particular audience segment, “Set in the gutters, bars, and alleys of Venice, California, this darkly comic crime/detective saga is filled with sex, violence, booze, and plenty of foul street talk,” a segment that wouldn't necessarily exclude me, but it’s not a description th

In an invisible world populated by the homeless, Murphy and his cohorts struggle and somehow manage to survive day by day. They look to one another for support in their Venice, CA habitat, showing the reader that invisibility does not mean they do not exist. Nor is their world all that different from ours, in that they have needs, desires, and love, just like the rest of us.For Murphy, his dog Betty means more to him than anything else. He would do whatever it takes to protect and save his frien

Groucho Marx is quoted as saying “Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.” This novel has been called “ultra noir”, but I’d like to re-classify it as “ultra gritty” and “waggishly noir!”Eric Coyote’s sideways humor…. peppered with crisp writing and fresh metaphors was a totally unexpected surprise! I am not accustomed to the street language of the day, but I didn’t flinch too much with the graphic insults, descriptions of sexual kinkiness, bodily flu