"Cut, Paste, Kill" by Marshall Karp: Book Review

David


"Cut, Paste, Kill" by Marshall Karp
Minotaur, 296 pp., $25.99
Reviewed by David Marshall James

Author Marshall Karp is so hip that he's even ahead of the Betty White craze.

She figures funnily-- what else?-- into the plot here, and would have a really memorable cameo if this novel made it to film, and she were cast as Karp tags her.

So would Matt Damon-- if he's willing to do a Tony Perkins twirl.

Speaking of the movie biz, LAPD homicide detective Terry Biggs-- partner to Det. Mike Lomax-- is silver-screen dreaming in this fourth Lomax & Biggs mystery, collaborating with Mike's pop, Big Jim, on a screenplay about big-rig truckers who fight crime on the side.

Sort of like a downsized A Team.

However, that's just a leitmotif in this chucklefest, in which Lomax & Biggs are hot on the trail of L.A.'s scrapbook killer-- a vigilante who's stabbing (with scissors, but natch) skumsukkahs who ought to be in jail but who have skirted the law in various and sundry fashions.

After each murder, a scrapbook of the victim's life and misdeeds is left at the scene.

L & B's encounters at a Chinese restaurant and an adult-toy shop top the fun here.

However, it never really stops, given the repartee of Lomax-- and particularly Biggs. They're too smart azzes with the biggest wisecracks this side of a gathering of MENSA-member proctologists.

As if the laughs weren't enough, author Karp supplies a mind-blowing ending.

Oh, this is fun, fun, fun-- like T-Bird-ing to a Beach Boys soundtrack.

IOW: A must-add if you're compiling a kick-it-back summer-reading list.


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