It’s always embarrassing to admit that I just don’t get a book. But honesty requires me to say that Bye Bye Bertie by Rick Dewhurst pretty much mystifies me. It’s a parody on hard-boiled detective novels, but also a parody on evangelical Christian culture, by a Christian writer. For me, it raised more discomfort than laughter. Maybe I don’t get it because I’m too close to the subject.

Joe LaFlam, the hero and narrator, is a Seattle private eye. A Christian private eye, who lives with his mother and makes his living as a cab driver. Except that his real name is John Doe, and he actually lives in Vancouver, BC, which he insists is Seattle. One day a beautiful (Christian) dame named Brittany Morgan walks into his office, to ask him to find her sister Alberta (Bertie), who has been kidnapped by Druids. He takes the job largely in the hope of winning Brittany as a Christian wife. The hunt leads him on an improbable, slapstick search through Seattle’s (Vancouver’s) back streets, where he encounters a hit man working for a world government conspiracy, who keeps trying (unsuccessfully) to kill him. As well as several other guys who may have been his father (before they were Christians).

It’s all very strange. Lots of jokes are made about popular American Christian culture, which certainly has earned a lot of ribbing.

But I didn’t know how to take the story as a whole. Joe is a sympathetic character, but he’s clueless and heavily delusional. He doesn’t even know what country he’s in. I’m kind of uncomfortable with seeing him set up – it would seem – as some kind of representative evangelical. Maybe we deserve that. But it seemed excessive.

But maybe I just don’t get it.

Suitable for most readers. I can’t either recommend it or dis-recommend Bye Bye Bertie.