Just finished reading...

...BLUE HEAVEN by Joe Keenan.

The cover of the book is rather confusing. I have a trade paperback with the name of the book in a classic Art Deco font and a cast of 1930s characters, as seen above. I was therefore surprised to discover, early in the novel, references to life in the 1980s (it was published in 1988). Okay, so I adjusted my perceptions, but the writing style only continued to reinforce the sense of another era. The book jacket likens author Joe Keenan’s first novel to the work of British comedic author P.G. Wodehouse (who was writing in the 20s and 30s), but I found the writing to be a little Noel Coward-esque. Keenan can be clever, and has a way of setting up a joke so that the punch line can be delivered in an arch and urbane way. When not setting up a joke, his writing is smoothly sufficient.

But the story and characters fall short. The premise of the book—a gay man and a female acquaintance decide to enter into a sham marriage solely for the money and gifts they expect to receive at the wedding—is pretty wobbly to begin with. Neither of them like each other, even platonically. And the narrator, who seems to be a normal, intelligent man, is dragged—unbelievably so—into this silly, greedy plot. It seems like the story could be a fun, light-hearted romp, but it quickly becomes tedious, adding one ridiculous, implausible scheme onto another, and nothing ends up happening. The addition of a drag queen and the mafia do nothing to alleviate the monotonous and tiresome “hijinks,” and the last-minute “deus ex-machina” ending is fairly anti-climactic.

The characters themselves are rather thinly drawn, making it difficult to form any attachment to anyone. They are either “caricatures” or “types” and behave exactly as one would expect from a form where zaniness is supposed to abound and hilarity is supposed to ensue. The entire thing feels like an excruciatingly long half-hour sit-com, which made total sense once I discovered that Keenan writes sit-coms for a living ("Frasier" and "Desperate Housewives").

Recommend? Although the writing is good, and there were a few “laugh-out-loud” lines in the book, ultimately I would say don’t bother with this one. Skip it; you’ll live your life just fine without it.