Doohickey
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Overview
Nick Fashon is having a bad day. He's just found out his estranged grandfather has died mysteriously in the Arizona desert. Then he meets his potential father-in-law, who turns out to be an ex-cop with a screw loose and a penchant for bean dip. To top it off, he returns home to find his successful clothing shop has just burned to the ground and taken his upstairs apartment with it.
Love & Fashion was Nick Fashon and Vince Love's thriving clothing store until it went up in flames — the work of an arsonist, police say. Suddenly Nick is homeless and disillusioned, and both the insurance investigators and the police want a word with him. Where can he turn for help? He's wearing out his welcome with his archaeologist girlfriend, Gretchen, who's developing her own suspicions about him. His business partner and best friend, Vince, isn't much help either, as Nick discovers more and more disturbing clues that point to Vince as the one who set the blaze.
Things begin to look up when Nick finds out his eccentric late grandfather has left him an unusual inheritance: a thriving pet-coffin business and a barn full of peculiar inventions, including one particularly interesting doohickey called the HandyMate. The HandyMate is the ultimate kitchen gadget — a simple tool that can cut, core, chop, slice, and potentially transform the domestic world. Full of entrepreneurial zeal, Nick is determined to see one in every kitchen drawer in America.
But Nick isn't the only one planning to strike it rich with the HandyMate. Yola Fuentes, Nick's grandfather's irresistibly sexy business partner, is so determined to get the HandyMate that she makes Nick an offer he can't refuse. And Robo Fuentes, her jealous ex-husband, has a bullet with Nick's name on it if he takes her up on that offer. Nick quickly finds himself caught in a situation where a twisted thing of plastic might end up costing him his girlfriend, his self-respect — and his life.
With the help of a cast of colorful characters, master storyteller Pete Hautman delivers a stylish and funny mystery with more twists and turns than the HandyMate itself.
Synopsis
Nick Fashon is having a bad day. He's just found out his estranged grandfather has died mysteriously in the Arizona desert. Then he meets his potential father-in-law, who turns out to be an ex-cop with a screw loose and a penchant for bean dip. To top it off, he returns home to find his successful clothing shop has just burned to the ground and taken his upstairs apartment with it.
Love & Fashion was Nick Fashon and Vince Love's thriving clothing store until it went up in flames — the work of an arsonist, police say. Suddenly Nick is homeless and disillusioned, and both the insurance investigators and the police want a word with him. Where can he turn for help? He's wearing out his welcome with his archaeologist girlfriend, Gretchen, who's developing her own suspicions about him. His business partner and best friend, Vince, isn't much help either, as Nick discovers more and more disturbing clues that point to Vince as the one who set the blaze.
Things begin to look up when Nick finds out his eccentric late grandfather has left him an unusual inheritance: a thriving pet-coffin business and a barn full of peculiar inventions, including one particularly interesting doohickey called the HandyMate. The HandyMate is the ultimate kitchen gadget — a simple tool that can cut, core, chop, slice, and potentially transform the domestic world. Full of entrepreneurial zeal, Nick is determined to see one in every kitchen drawer in America.
But Nick isn't the only one planning to strike it rich with the HandyMate. Yola Fuentes, Nick's grandfather's irresistibly sexy business partner, is so determined to get the HandyMate that she makes Nick an offer he can't refuse. And Robo Fuentes, her jealous ex-husband, has a bullet with Nick's name on it if he takes her up on that offer. Nick quickly finds himself caught in a situation where a twisted thing of plastic might end up costing him his girlfriend, his self-respect — and his life.
With the help of a cast of colorful characters, master storyteller Pete Hautman delivers a stylish and funny mystery with more twists and turns than the HandyMate itself.
Publishers Weekly
Hautman's 10th novel (after 2001's Rag Man) is an amiable thriller infused with the author's characteristic wit, equipped with a Rube Goldbergian plot, and featuring a roster of eccentric (to virtually outrageous) characters who keep readers entertained when the story's pace slackens. Nicholas Fashon and his pal Vince Love own a fashionable leather goods store in Tucson, Ariz. Nick's roguish granddad dies, leaving him a inheritance of useless inventions. Useless, that is, with one exception: a doohickey called the HandyMate, which performs numerous kitchen functions most efficiently. Yola Fuentes, a TV chef, is interested in the HandyMate and wants to use it on her TV show. Nick is grateful, especially since the building housing his store and the apartment upstairs containing all his worldly goods has just burned down. The fire department says the cause was electrical, but the insurance company says it's arson and won't pay. In addition, his partner Vince owes money to a scary man called Robo who, after cracking several of Vince's ribs, threatens to kill him for an encore. Nick isn't sure whom to trust. Why would anyone deliberately burn down his store? Nick is a likable and intelligent hero, Robo a suitably menacing villain, and the plot's clever resolution satisfies. This unremarkable novel may not linger long in readers' memories, but it delivers a few hours of enjoyable reading. Agent, Jonathon Lazear. (Oct. 2) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly
Hautman's 10th novel (after 2001's Rag Man) is an amiable thriller infused with the author's characteristic wit, equipped with a Rube Goldbergian plot, and featuring a roster of eccentric (to virtually outrageous) characters who keep readers entertained when the story's pace slackens. Nicholas Fashon and his pal Vince Love own a fashionable leather goods store in Tucson, Ariz. Nick's roguish granddad dies, leaving him a inheritance of useless inventions. Useless, that is, with one exception: a doohickey called the HandyMate, which performs numerous kitchen functions most efficiently. Yola Fuentes, a TV chef, is interested in the HandyMate and wants to use it on her TV show. Nick is grateful, especially since the building housing his store and the apartment upstairs containing all his worldly goods has just burned down. The fire department says the cause was electrical, but the insurance company says it's arson and won't pay. In addition, his partner Vince owes money to a scary man called Robo who, after cracking several of Vince's ribs, threatens to kill him for an encore. Nick isn't sure whom to trust. Why would anyone deliberately burn down his store? Nick is a likable and intelligent hero, Robo a suitably menacing villain, and the plot's clever resolution satisfies. This unremarkable novel may not linger long in readers' memories, but it delivers a few hours of enjoyable reading. Agent, Jonathon Lazear. (Oct. 2) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.Kirkus Reviews
Yet another struggling businessman with romance in his heart and felony dogging his footsteps.Talk about your cosmic justice. The day Nick Fashon finds out that his grandfather, reclusive inventor Caleb Hardy, has been found dead, his body nibbled by coyotes, is the same day that Love & Fashion, his clothing store, has burned to the ground, together with Nick’s uninsured apartment, his nine pairs of Bally shoes, and his collection of 500 Motown records. "Caleb had lost his life, but his stuff was okay. Nick had lost his stuff, but he was alive. Now he had new stuff," muses the survivor, whose inheritance seems limited to Caleb’s crackpot prototypes—the Inch-Adder, the Comb-n-Clean, and all the rest of their uncommercial ilk. One item, though, seizes Nick’s fancy: the HandyMate, a kitchen gadget that slices, dices, and does everything else. Bent on bringing the enchanted chunk of plastic to market, Nick swiftly finds that although the HandyMate’s seized other fancies too—especially that of Caleb’s girlfriend Yola Fuente, the restaurateur who, claiming half ownership in the thingamabob, is determined to introduce it on her cooking program and run off with the proceeds—it leaves his impecunious partner, Vincent Love, cold, and stirs up nothing but trouble for Nick’s ladylove Gretchen Groth (Archaeology/Univ. of Arizona), whose demand that he not raise seed money from her ex-cop father Bootsie are matched by Bootsie’s demand that he take the money and make them both rich. A slippery insurance agent, a Tucson arson investigator, and an excitable loan shark are all on hand to drag Nick deeper into trouble.
Since Hautman has excelled in both fairy tales and comic nightmares (Rag Man,2001, etc.), he’s just the craftsman to plunk his appealing hero into the middle of a tale so finely balanced that it could go either way right up to the end.