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Al Bready is a ghostwriter, but not like any you've ever heard of-he ghostwrites a comic strip, and not just any strip, either. Derby Dugan is possibly the most successful comic of the time-the story of a little boy in a big hat and a talking dog who travel the country encountering pirates and poor people, villainy and virtuousness, and along the way make the strip's creator, Walter Geebus, richer than Croesus. Bready doesn't mind; he's one of those rare souls that hasn't much use for money, and the Dugan strip is just one drop in the ocean of pulp writing that he pumps out. The only things that really matter to him are the lovely (and married) Jewel Rodgers, and the strip itself, of which he is justly proud, and he'll put up with about anything to keep them, even the rantings of the misanthropic Geebus.
Not many people are willing to do that, though, and when the old man's health starts to decline (the result of an attempted poisoning years before), Bready must come to terms with his relationship with Geebus, the illustrator's attractive ex-wife, his sullen, ambitious assistant, and Jewel. Along the way, he has to deal with a too-good-to-be-true opportunity to write something called a comic book, placate mobsters, encounter the aptly named Mysterious Jones, the only masked man in Manhattan, and ponder a cryptic story outline from Geebus.
Tom DeHaven has created a remarkably believable world in Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies, a world with sounds and color and sights and smells. New York City in the '30s must have been this way-and if it wasn't, it should have been. He also has given us memorable characters with all-too-real problems, and more than that, a novel of surprising depth. I love books that make me hate it when I'm through, and Derby Dugan was over much too soon. Pick up a copy of this book and get angry at Tom DeHaven yourself.
James Neal Webb used to draw cartoons in his notebook when he was a boy.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.
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