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Ted Collins introduces himself to the reader with a page and a half description of how disgustingly ugly he finds a naked woman – one who turns out not to be naked at all, but he’s mentally stripping her to humiliate her. He is proud of being, in his own words, an asshole. “I can incite others to violence faster than ever . . . scarcely a week goes by when my obnoxiousness fails to get me mistaken for an attorney.” It’s only the fourth paragraph and I don’t like this man, I don’t want to spend 325 pages listening to him crow about his attitude, and I can completely grasp why his wife (whom he insults with every mention) divorced him and the judge (another woman he complains screwed him over) demanded supervised visits with his daughter, whom he claims to love but who, being female, is also portrayed as an annoying, selfish brat. Still, it’s a reviewer’s job to wade through the worst, so wade I did. Ted does grow the occasional redeeming feature – there turn out to be two women who aren’t complete pieces of crap in his eyes, one of whom accurately pegs him as “one of those exasperating chaps who walk around thinking you’re smarter than everyone else, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.” He even shows a faint glimmer of chivalry – when a woman disappears and he was the last one to see her having a violent argument with her boyfriend, he’s convinced that the boyfriend killed her. However, for some strange reason the cops aren’t convinced by his phoning in evidence while putting on a Foghorn Leghorn accent. So Ted decides to see if he can pull strings to get the rap-star boyfriend onto his reality show (a very thinly veiled version of The Apprentice) and see if he can rattle out the truth that way. This is a book for people who like the grittiest of gritty reading. In addition to Ted’s attitudes, it’s common for characters to address each other as “nigger” and “cunt.” Also, there’s a long passage with an explicit description of someone using a toilet. Ted was hiding in the shower. By the time I finished the book, I felt like I needed one.
Reviewed by Linnea Dodson, August 2007
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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