Meet Happy Doll.

Hap to his friends. He’s a LA private detective living a quiet life along with his beloved half-Chihuahua, half-terrier, George.

He’s getting by just fine.

When he’s not walking George or sipping tequila, Hap works nights at the Thai Miracle Spa, protecting the women who work there from clients who won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.

Until he kills a man.

Usually Doll avoids trouble by following his two basic rules: bark loudly, and act first. But after a deadly fight with a customer, even he finds himself wildly out of his depth….

I picked out ‘A Man Named Doll’ from Jonathan Amers’ back-catalogue after I read his novella ‘You Were Never Really Here’. It’s the first book in a series, and it seemed to have a lighter tone than his rather bleak novella.

I didn’t get very far into it before I set it aside. It wasn’t my kind of book. 

I had no patience with the apparently mismamed Happy, a dope-smoking, tequila-drinking, I-have-so-many-burdens-to-bear, tough-guy ex-cop PI in LA. I felt I’d met him before, and I wished I hadn’t bumped into him again. 

The prose felt familiar, but not in a good way. Jonathan Ames chose to narrate the audiobook. He wasn’t awful, but his limited range dulled the edges of the text, making everything sound like a world-weary cliché.

‘A Man Called Doll’ averages 3.71 stars on GoodReads and the series is now three books long, so the book must work for some, maybe even most, readers. If you’d like to check out Jonathan Ames’ prose and narration, click on the YouTube link below.