{"id":17485,"date":"2022-11-07T19:29:35","date_gmt":"2022-11-08T00:29:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=17485"},"modified":"2022-11-07T19:29:35","modified_gmt":"2022-11-08T00:29:35","slug":"halo-dolly-by-rick-dewhurst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=17485","title":{"rendered":"‘Halo Dolly,’ by Rick Dewhurst"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Rick Dewhurst, I have it on good authority <\/strong>(Phil\u2019s), is a good guy. He\u2019s also a good \u2013 if quirky \u2013 writer. And I can only assume he has masochistic side, because he keeps sending me his books to review, even though I can sometimes be hard on them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His Joe LaFlam series is particularly challenging to me. In the first book, Bye Bye Bertie<\/a><\/em>, we were introduced to Joe as a delusional young Christian man. His real name was John Doe, he didn\u2019t know what city he lived in, and he thought he was a private eye when he was actually a cab driver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through his subsequent adventures, he has become Joe LaFlam in fact, and has been united with his real parents, who are billionaires. So as Halo Dolly<\/a><\/em> begins he is living and working in a penthouse (in a big city \u201ca lot like Seattle\u201d), running a detective agency with his friends Alfred (a former hit man, now a Christian) and Abner (a former drunk, now a conspiracy-minded Christian). A beautiful (and rich) young woman named Grace (also a Christian, of course) walks into the office saying she needs protection from a kidnapping threat. Joe immediately takes the job (not unmindful of the fact that Grace is very good marriage prospect), and it doesn\u2019t take long for Grace to be kidnapped from right under their noses. So begins a series of implausible and slapstick developments which lead them to his old menace, the sinister Spelunkers International organization. And to even more evil forces, including demons from the pit of Hell. Or maybe not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As with Bye Bye Bertie<\/em>, I was mostly perplexed as I read Halo Dolly<\/em>. I never know how to take these books. Bertie is less delusional now than he used to be (probably), but the Christian self-talk in his narration makes me uncomfortable. I\u2019m not sure whether I\u2019m supposed to laugh at it. It\u2019s so much like my own self-talk, frankly, that it seems hypocritical. Or else I just don\u2019t get the joke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think it may go back to what I call the Aunt Midge Syndrome. That name refers to my own late Aunt Midge, who reacted almost violently once at a family gathering, when the Carol Burnett Show was on. Carol was playing a character with low self-esteem, who talked too much and apologized too much and self-deprecated all the time. I noted that this was precisely what Aunt Midge was like and reasoned, based on her reaction, that people in general aren\u2019t amused by jokes dealing with their own quirks and hang-ups, even ones they\u2019re not aware of. (This is possibly the only insight into human psychology I\u2019ve ever had.) So it may be that I\u2019m just too much like Joe to appreciate the joke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, there\u2019s nothing offensive in this book, and much mirth is derived from lampooning popular conspiracy theories \u2013 except that they seem to be generally correct here. The joke\u2019s on all of us, I guess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to Rick Dewhurst for a free copy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rick Dewhurst, I have it on good authority (Phil\u2019s), is a good guy. He\u2019s also a good \u2013 if quirky \u2013 writer. And I can only assume he has masochistic side, because he keeps sending me his books to review, even though I can sometimes be hard on them. His Joe LaFlam series is particularly … Continue reading ‘Halo Dolly,’ by Rick Dewhurst<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[4423,4422,2376],"class_list":["post-17485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-halo-dolly","tag-joe-laflam","tag-rick-dewhurst"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17485"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17486,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17485\/revisions\/17486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}