Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Felonious Monk | 2022 | William Kotzwinkle | Buy |
| 2 | Bloody Martini | 2023 | William Kotzwinkle | Buy |
The Felonious Monk series is William Kotzwinkle’s return to adult crime fiction after a long gap, and it arrives with the same darkly comic sensibility that has marked his best work. Tommy Martini, the narrator, is a genuinely funny creation: a young man who sought inner peace and got the opposite, whose monastery training gives him exactly zero useful skills for dealing with the criminals and killers he keeps running into.
The first book, Felonious Monk, sets up the character and world with considerable wit, dropping Tommy into situations involving hired killers, UFO cults, and haughty crime lords. Bloody Martini continues in the same vein. Both books are written in a crisp, wry first-person voice that owes something to classic hardboiled fiction while maintaining Kotzwinkle’s own particular brand of absurdist humor.
Readers who enjoy crime fiction with a strong comedic edge, or who know Kotzwinkle from his literary novels, will find the series an entertaining and fast-moving read. The combination of genuine menace and comic timing is something Kotzwinkle handles well, and Tommy Martini is the kind of narrator who makes you want to see what catastrophe he wanders into next.