Zeco Raposo, who calls himself Connor --- because everyone needs two or three names to go by, right? --- went into New London to pick up his Bruno Maglis from the cobbler. It should have been an easy errand, but his Mini Cooper got stranded when emergency vehicles responding to a horrible accident right outside the shoe shop blocked him in. While he was paying for the alterations to his excellent footwear, a motorcyclist screamed by at an unfortunate speed and time, just as a truck backed out of an alley at its own unfortunate speed and time. Poof! Cut in half like a magic act.

"In reality, this story isn’t so much about solving who did what to whom as it is about the town of New London by the Connecticut shore and its population of “tradiculous” residents... To be fair, few murder mysteries can rival IS FAT BOB DEAD YET? in number of absurdities. But that’s precisely the point of it."

Now everyone around town thinks the victim is Fat Bob, who is actually named Robert and tends to weigh in on the heavy side. But Fat Bob is called Fat Bob because he rides a Fat Bob, the exact type of motorcycle that disintegrated into a million little pieces along with its rider the day of the accident. Except the police have started to think that maybe it wasn’t an accident after all. Because maybe it wasn’t Fat Bob. And, well, Zeco (or Connor) isn’t the most reliable of witnesses. See, Zeco/Connor works with his uncle Didi (not his real name, of course), collecting funds for questionable causes like Free Beagles From Nicotine Addiction, Inc. and Prom Queens Anonymous, along with several other charities as sincerely honest. Their headquarters are in a Winnebago parked in a nearby campground, manned by two telemarketing cell phone scammers with famous aliases, headed, of course, by Uncle Didi. Zeco/Connor is their leg man, since he has trouble lying without being caught. His job consists mostly of collecting checks from the Post Office box. Not much confrontation to worry about there. Still, it makes him nervous.

Detectives Manny Streeter and Benny Vikstrom land the case of the severed motorcyclist. They are a pair as annoying to each other as they are to the general public. The mutual irritation seems to stem originally from a vague misunderstanding arising out of something to do with karaoke. If only they could manage to focus their aggressions on the bad guys instead of trying to figure out how to piss off each other, they might have solved the case sooner, but then we wouldn’t have had as much fun running clues into the ground and chasing after witnesses who show a grand talent for elusiveness. Plus, Streeter and Vikstrom end up with a couple of FBI agents breathing down their necks, which makes them even crankier with everybody.

In reality, this story isn’t so much about solving who did what to whom as it is about the town of New London by the Connecticut shore and its population of “tradiculous” residents, a term Uncle Didi coined. To be fair, few murder mysteries can rival IS FAT BOB DEAD YET? in number of absurdities. But that’s precisely the point of it. There’s little serious about it. It’s a place to escape to. The dust jacket tells us that Stephen King loved it, and no wonder. King is the, well, king of fully realized, quirky and dangerous characters. Stephen Dobyns is giving him a good run for the top spot with the kooks in this novel. Besides, they share a name, which probably neither of them made up.

So I say read it now; don’t wait for the movie to come out. Oh yeah, there’s bound to be a film. With a cast like Chucky, Jimbo, Joesy, Jack Sprat and Eartha Kitt, not to mention Fat Bob who rides a Fat Bob, how could there not be?