Jay Russell
Brown Harvest

A delicious, dark parody about what happens when favorite literary characters from childhood grow up: a post-modern pastiche for eggheads.

What happens when the Boy Detective grows up, moves away, and comes home for a visit? His hometown's gone from American-as-apple-pie to darkest noir; his once innocent girlfriend has transformed into something both more and less than she once was; his father has become a bum on the skids — and that's the least of it.

At once a parody and a tribute to childhood heroes, Brown Harvest turns and twists the fondest memories of characters familiar to anyone who grew up reading detective stories. Definitely "R"-rated, drawing on a tradition of borrowing from popular classics that stretches from Shakespeare to Jay Cantor (Krazy Kat), Russell joyfully creates mayhem from colliding the worlds of hardboiled thrillers, "Young Adult" mysteries, and classic noir fiction.

With more cameo appearances than a John Landis film — with every character from Dr. Doolittle to Harry Potter popping up in the most unexpected places — Brown Harvest is what might have resulted had Dashiell Hammett written a "Hardy Boys" story to be filmed by David Lynch.

The pseudonymous "Jay Russell" was born in New York City in 1961 and lives in London with his wife and daughter. A former private investigator, he is the author of four previous novels, including the "Marty Burns" mysteries: Celestial Dogs (selected as one of the best novels of 1997 by the Washington Post Book World), Burning Bright, and Greed & Stuff.