The Shroud of the Thwacker
by Chris Elliott
Miramax, 368 pages, hardback, 2005
Struggling 20th-century writer Chris Elliott (a sort of alter ego of the author) is drawn by the prospect of making lots of money to write a book about the unsolved series of grotesque 19th-century Manhattan killings attributed to a mysterious Jack the Thwacker. After all, the case has everything a potboiling writer could want: an anonymous stalker who felled his killers with a back of Mackintosh apples and then turned their mutilated bodies into bizarre tableaux; a detective team comprising NYPD detective Caleb Spencer and his on-again-off-again lover, the spunky yummy-dame journalist Liz Smith, plus Teddy Roosevelt; and above all the suspicion that the murderer might have been someone in a position of high social authority. (Initially Elliott had thought the perpetrator might be Goya, for no particular reason other than that Goya was a famous artist, but had to withdraw that suggestion when Goya's surviving descendants threatened to sue.)
As his "researches" continue, we spend most of our time in the 19th century among the filthy, violent, gaslit alleys of New York City – which the author actually does quite a good job of evoking, even as he triumphantly mangles most of the historical facts – and part of it in the present day, where Elliott, living in the famous Dakota building, must cope with the fact that neighbor Yoko Ono wants to have him evicted, by fair means or foul, so she can convert his apartment into another studio. But will Elliott be drawn not just figuratively but literally into the 19th-century murder plot?
For the first one-third or so of The Shroud of the Thwacker the manic inventiveness of the plot, the joyful bawdy broadness of its portrayal of the main characters (I have the feeling the fart-happy buffoon Roosevelt depicted here is far closer to historical reality than the noble-idealist version we customarily meet), the constant barrage of excellently bad jokes and the satirical sideswipes at authors like Caleb Carr, Patricia Cornwell and Dan Brown more than compensate for the frequent examples of clumsy or even downright bad writing. The mixture makes for a merry melange that had me laughing out loud on more pages than not.
But then things begin to flag. The inventiveness is still there, but it seems to have become self-conscious, almost desperate ("Oh, jeez, I've not had a wacky idea for a chapter or two, better think up something really outrageous quick!") while the jokes tail off in both number and hilarity. By the book's end the pages are still turning fairly readily, but without great interest, and smiles – let alone laughs – have become increasingly rare. Matters aren't improved by the exceedingly ho-hum illustrations, which seem intended to charm by their amateurishness but succeed only in seeming amateur.
Terry Pratchett need not look to his laurels, but The Shroud of the Thwacker has a first hundred pages to die for and is at least moderately entertaining thereafter.
—Crescent Blues