"James Lileks is a word magician, and GRAVEYARD SPECIAL is a unique and heady brew containing measures of Donald Westlake, Raymond Chandler, Richard Brautigan and something special that can only be called “Lilekian” --  which is a compliment of the highest order.  Readers will love this fiendishly clever romp through 1980’s Minneapolis.  There is a laugh on every page and a quotable line in every paragraph."

 -C.J. Box, New York Times Bestselling author of FORCE OF NATURE

 

The overnight fry cook rambles up to the pie case to take his nightly hit of dessert-topping propellant, and it’s not a complete surprise when he falls to the floor. The stuff gives him the spins. That’s why he likes the stuff. It’s a bad moment for the boss to arrive, though. It’s worse when the cook turns out to be dead - from a bullet no one heard.

For the waiter, it’s the start of the the worst few months of his life, and before it’s done he’ll be neck-deep in drug deals, hockey-player fist-fights, romances with a faithless minx and an unintelligible Russian teacher - and a plot by local radicals to blow something big to protest the way the world is going. It’s 1980, after all, and everyone knows it’s going to be a grim ride

“Graveyard Special” is another humorous mystery by the author of “Falling Up the Stairs,” and the first in a series of interconnected mysteries that span six decades.