By Chris Elliott
Miramax Books, 360 pages
Available at Powerbooks
This may be Chris Elliot’s first novel, but anyone who has watched him, in the films Cabin Boy or There’s Something About Mary or on television on Saturday Night Live and Everybody Loves Raymond, will know that one should expect his fiction to be imbued with droll, wry humor. And Elliot more than delivers on this maiden outing. The Shroud of the Thwacker may be historical crime (think Caleb Carr or Jack the Ripper novels), but it comes to us via Douglas Addams and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventures. While 1880s New York City may be the setting, and crime fiction may be the overhanging genre, there are shafts of humor that range from the sublime to the oh-no-and-raise-your-eyebrows-to-the-ceiling ridiculous. The wonderful thing about Elliot is that even when he’s goofy ridiculous, one can’t help but smile or laugh out loud, because we know it’s all in the name of fun.
Chris places himself squarely as narrator and as a character within the novel – in fact, correct that, as characters, as there’s a semi-evil doppelganger that inhabits late 19th-century New York. With one-way time-travel as an important element for the mayhem that ensues, you can read this and imagine how existential humor will be a future literary vein to mine. Making cameos throughout the novel are personages like Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Houdini, Boss Tweed, Caleb Spencer, Liz Smith (yes, the New York Post columnist), and Yoko Ono (yes, do not rub your eyes, Yoko Ono, as both Chris and Yoko reside at the Dakotas). With such a stellar cast of historical and contemporary figures, you get an inkling of how this novel will play and tease you with comedic possibilities. There’s even a boilerplate robot that comes across as some precursor to C3PO. The New York Fire of the 1880s and Rosie O’Grady, who legend has it started the fire, even figures in the shenanigans the novel presents.
I mentioned how Chris inserts himself in the novel’s action. As unwitting victim of time-travel, the modern-day Chris Elliot discloses his morbid fascination with the legend of the 1882 New York serial killer dubbed the Thwacker. When he finds himself in 1880s New York, beyond the very visceral elements of turn-of-the-century life, the smell, the grime and dirt, the sweat, and absence of a good number of things we now take for granted, he embarks on the quest to discover the identity of the killer. Precious is this passage when Elliot finds out when and where he is: "After all, this was the period in New York City history that captivated me the most. The majestic architecture, the cultivated manners, the simplicity of life, the disregard for one’s fellow man, the plagues, the rampant corruption, the unmitigated racism, the uncontrollable violence – all the things our grandparents called ‘the good old days’."
The official investigation to uncover the Thwacker has Caleb Spencer interacting with Mayor Teddy Roosevelt and Liz Smith. A more absurd characterization of the larger-than-life Roosevelt than the one we discover within these pages will be hard to find. His legendary exclamations, his confusion about his own exploits, his lecherous side, his egotistical fascination with himself, his voice, and his stories these all form parts of the side-splitting Teddy we get in this book.
There’s even a section of the book that comes across like a zany Lord of the Flies or South Park with a lot more "aggro." A district in New York is completely inhabited by young orphan children forced to fend for themselves, bond together, and engage in gang warfare 1880s-style. They cheat, they steal, they plunder, then sleep, sucking their thumbs and with their stuffed toys by their side. When this motley group of toddler enfants terribles rescue the amnesia-addled Teddy Roosevelt, it’s pandemonium.
As befits a stand-up comedian, the dialogue is chock-full of digressions, asides, one-liners, and non-sequiturs. When Harry Houdini appears in the New York City jail to assist Caleb in escaping, Houdini is accompanied by his stage assistant, Beth. Instead of simply extricating Caleb from his cell, Houdini proceeds to first give a show to all the inmates. Exasperated, Caleb seeks some explanation from Beth and she declares, "He can’t perform without an audience … I know, I know, you don’t have to tell me – it’s crazy. Try having sex with the guy."
All throughout, Elliot remains true to his genre. The historical crime fiction becomes hysterical historical, and it is a wonderful, light read. While Ruth Rendell’s 13 Steps Up is a more classic form of psychological crime fiction, Elliot’s The Shroud of the Thwacker is a send-up of sorts, but one that I guarantee will have you holding your stomach, and stifling the laughter, lest the person beside you think you’ve gone loco. It would be good to see what Chris Elliot will come up with next. Like Steve Martin, Chris has successfully crossed over to add a slash to his name – as in comedian/novelist.