★ Cartoonist Connie O'Toole babbles incessantly with the "stars" of his weekly cartoon, an opinionated walrus with a chicken permanently nested on his head (weird). Nonetheless, a neighborhood child asks for their help in finding his lost cat. Connie and his long-suffering wife locate the feline in a nearby construction lot, along with a human skull, a ruby earring, and a Waldo Chicken statue, stolen the year before (weirder!). All kinds of colorful plot peregrinations ensue, accompanied by cartoony characters and witty dialog. Essential.

Constable "Connie" O'Toole is a famous cartoonist who has a penchant for solving mysteries around his neighborhood. Which in itself might not be too strange but Connie doesn't solve the mysteries by himself. He has the help of Waldo and Chicken. Who is Waldo and Chicken you ask? Well Waldo is a fat pompous walrus and Chicken is a frightfully nervous hen that roosts on Waldo's head. Waldo and Chicken are Connie's cartoon creations. Connie can talk to them when he is in his studio with a picture of them or when he has a small statue of them that his father made for him. The statue has been missing for about a year. It had disappeared after a séance that Connie had helped with. The séance was held for Maud Watson so she could contact her dead husband so she could change her will. Now a year later Connie found the statue and something else he wasn't ready for.

Mr. Woo a neighborhood cat was missing and Connie said he would help look for him. When Connie and his wife Evelyn went to the building site of a future neighbor they not only discover Mr. Woo and the missing statue, they found a human skull. Of course they also find themselves in the middle of a murder investigation.

There is of course a full cast of characters in this story. Who did the skull belong too? Why had someone put Waldo and Chicken with them? Will Connie, Waldo and Chicken be able to solve this mystery?

Waldo Chicken Wakes the Dead is Alan Goldsmith's first book, and I know it will not be his last. Waldo, Chicken and Connie kept me thoroughly entertained. I loved the way that Connie, Waldo and Chicken interacted with each other. Waldo was a very pompous know-it-all who was always right, and wanted to get rid of the stupid Chicken on his head. Chicken was a scatterbrain who sometimes didn't know which way is up, but was very useful just the same. All three of them had me in stitches. I did feel sorry for Evelyn because Connie's talking to Waldo and Chicken always embarrassed her, even thought she knew that they would help Connie. I can't wait for Mr. Goldsmith to come out with another Waldo and Chicken mystery. I hope it is very soon. If you like a good mystery with some humor thrown in, you must get a copy of this story.

Lydia Funneman

Reviewed by Narayan Radhakrishnan

"Sniff, sniff"

Do I smell the arrival of a new sub- genre in the Mystery genre- already saturated with sci- fiction, legal thrillers, horror fiction, political thrillers and other sub- genres?

I ask this because, in the last couple of months I read two books that were totally unique to the mystery genre and proved wonderful, wonderful reading. The first one that I read a couple of months back was Mark Haddon?s THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT TIME and the other book is the one under review- WALDO CHICKEN WAKES THE DEAD. Subtle humor, sublime hardcore (literary) thoughts and murder whodunits are finely and tastefully blended to give pristine reading pleasure in these two books.

A synopsis of the plot of Waldo Chicken... will not reveal anything unique- but the total reading of the book will delight and enthrall the lover of good fiction. The narration, intermingled with comic column strips proves interesting reading. Connie O? Toole, a cartoonist by vocation is an amateur sleuth by passion. His sidekicks, who help Connie to solve mysteries, help in sleuthing etc. - are Waldo- a walrus and Chicken, a hen who has made the head of Waldo his permanent resting place. Why a walrus and a chicken for sidekicks, you might wonder? - The reason is fairly simple; Waldo and Chicken are a comic strip creation of Connie. Waldo is pompous, fat and has all attributes of a comic walrus. The Chicken is a squeak- nervous, complaining, all-in-all a nerd. And Connie enjoys a good rapport with the duo- and has hour long conversations with them- And yes Connie is normal. And he has a wonderful wife Evelyn.

But when Sammy Higgenbothum, the 9 year old neighbor request Connie to find out his missing cat, Mister Woo, Evelyn, Waldo, Chicken and Connie join hands and embark upon an investigation. They find Mister Woo, but also come across a skull, a ruby earring and a statue of Waldo!!!!! What follows is an exciting surrealistic mystery culminating in a well?.never imagined finish.

Enjoyed the work very much. Radical, really, really radical.

"Waldo Chicken Wakes the Dead" features both the most unusual title I've seen in awhile, but also a most unusual amateur detectives. Constable "Connie" O'Toole is a newspaper cartoonist who not only draws Waldo Chicken — a Mutt-and-Jeff duo of a sarcastic walrus and the flighty fowl who roosts on his head — he also talks to them. They talk back as well, mostly about the comic strip, but also about the small mysteries O'Toole is asked to look into. It was while searching for Mr. Woo, the neighborhood's reigning cat, that O'Toole and his long-suffering wife discover a skull, the marble statue of Waldo Chicken that had been stolen at a seance a year ago and an earring that belonged to Becky Thatcher, the hot Mississippi Amazon who came into town searching for a man who loved and abandoned a decade ago, and who may have died several times since.

And then it gets really weird.

Published through a small press in Idaho, "Waldo Chicken" is a funhouse ride through a world that combines Southern eccentrics with David Lynch-style weirdness, such as a bull named Elvis who's worth millions, a black detective with a fixation on "Amos and Andy" and a seance in which the spirit speaks through a blow-up doll. Alan Goldsmith, a retired ad exec living in Atlanta, keeps this carousel of crazys chugging along merrily, adding weirder complications that raise the stakes for O'Toole. It's only at the end that "Waldo Chicken" runs out of steam, with an extended evilogue that collapses the plot under the weight of its complications, but until then, it's great fun.

Instead of a run-of-the-mill whodunnit, Goldsmith's quirky debut is an incendiary mix of truth and humorous froth. The hero is a cartoonist assisted in his detecting by his bizarre characters, a pompous walrus and a nervous hen that roosts on his head.

The murder mystery of Waldo Chicken Wakes the Dead: A Murder Mystery of Unusual Proportions begins with a cat of unusual proportions, a large tom named Mr. Woo. When Constable O.Toole, the creator or interpreter of Waldo Walrus and his head-sitting chicken, sets out to bring the wayward cat home, he finds himself face down in someone else's shallow grave and neck deep in a murder mystery. The only witnesses are Mr.Woo, who's not talking, and Waldo and the Chicken, who only talk to Connie in the most disparaging of voices.

The idea of an artist who talks to his creations could be a clever way of avoiding the Chandler-clone narrative voice that plagues mystery novels to this day. Waldo is a grumpy, obliviously perceptive cetacean, dissatisfied with both his Chicken and his cartoonist. He's also a decent fellow with the banter, leaving Connie in the dust in all their debates. But this device is also the source of one of the great plot cracks in the story. It's impossible to tell if the reader is supposed to accept Waldo/Chicken as real, or just the products of Connie's imagination. But sometimes the duo are confined to artist's representations of themselves, sometime they seem to roam freely, and sometimes they deposit clues to the plot that only one of their avatars might have seen, unknown by any of the human characters. No help comes from the other members of the cast, who sometimes mock Connie's imaginary conversations and sometimes react with fear and awe to his mystic powers of contacting cartoon walruses. This indeterminate reality worked for Calvin and Hobbes; it's less effective in the sustained plot of a book, especially a mystery tale.

Figment or otherworldly visitor, Waldo Walrus is at least a steady character, able to fit in with the strange cast that lives along Hunter Drive. Connie evidently sees himself as a wacky cartoonist kept in check by his vocally long-suffering wife, Evelyn, but his behavior seems about as wacky as an I Love Lucy rerun next to the other residents of their neighborhood. Vivian, the former movie actress, strides through the entire book in costume. A femme fatale calling herself Becky Sawyer flirts with every male on the block with all the subtlety of Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch. And Mr.Woo, the cat whose roaming habits open the entire case, sheds his presence by reputation throughout the story.

Waldo Chicken sometimes works very well, mostly when Connie stops thinking about what a crazy cartoonist he is and turns the first-person view on his eclectic neighborhood of movie stars, professors, rummage sale millionaires, and psychics. The mystery itself is not particularly tempting, seeming rather dull and standard until the standard unmasking scene comes through in genuinely funny three-part harmony. By story's end, it seems the grumpy old walrus is correct: Waldo Chicken could be a star, if he could just shake that dimbulb cartoonist.

A skull has been found. Someone has obviously been murdered. So why are you giggling, chortling and guffawing out loud while drawing disapproving glances from others in the room?

Welcome to the the wacky world of Waldo and the Chicken, and their creator, cartoonist Constable "Connie" O'Toole. In the first of a planned series, Alan Goldsmith lays down the foundation for years of slapstick sleuthing while practically inventing a whole new genre: The laugh-your-a**-off murder mystery.

"Waldo Chicken Wakes the Dead" begins innocently enough. It's no big secret in his Georgia suburb that Connie O'Toole speaks to, argues with and is often humiliated by his own creations, the officious Waldo Walrus and the nervous hen nesting on his head known only as The Chicken. Folks regularly ask Connie to help them recover lost items and pets, a task he accomplishes by conferring with his cantankerous creations. On a day like any other, a neighborhood kid asks him to find Mr. Woo, a male lion in his prime disguised as a house cat, the terror of any four-legged mammal smaller than a Clydesdale and easily capable of having an eagle or two for lunch. Connie accepts the challenge and with the help of his wife Evelyn, they locate the wayward feline and stumble upon evidence of foul play.

Normally, this is where things turn grim, dark and depressing, but not when Connie O'Toole is around. Instead, a memorable cast of characters begin to make their entrances, adding even more quirkiness and hilarity to what should be a grave situation. Yes, someone is dead, but while you're trying to figure it out, Goldsmith bombards your funnybone with a nonstop barrage of one-liners, asides and daffy dialog. Hardly a page will go by without at least a grin and at best, laughter to the verge of tears.

If you want to spare yourself the embarrassment of laughing in public while trying to solve a murder mystery, use the old schooldays trick of hiding "Waldo Chicken Wakes the Dead" inside a decoy book, say, Debbie Farmer's equally hilarious "Don't Put Lipstick On The Cat!", also available from WindRiver Publishing.