John Swartzwelder was the head writer of the Simpsons back in the golden days when, for several years, it was the funniest half hour on television. Recently read an interview with him and it turns out that since he quit the show he's been writing funny detective novels involving a bumbling idiot private eye named Frank Burly.

I'd gladly give Swartzwelder all the money in my wallet if I saw him on the street given how many laughs he gave Young Me, so it was a no-brainer to drop $15 on one of these books. It's really slight, and as expected it's really dumb, but I laughed out loud a bunch, and sadly it was every bit as good of a mystery as the last few actual detective novels I've read.

Sample line "I slept like a baby that night - I woke up every few hours crying and shitting myself." Man I'm laughing out loud again just typing that. Anyway, not sure how many more of these I'll bother to read, because they seem pretty one note, but this was fun and obviously super breezy and fast.

The jokes come fast and furious and most of them provoke a smile, sometimes a chuckle, and on rare occasions I laugh out loud heartily at the idiot detective. It’s pretty much Homer from the Simpsons written as slightly more competent and punchable. And to be honest that’s all I was looking for in this book. There are some really great running gags in it too. It would make a perfect 30 minute sitcom.

2021 reads, #27. Notorious Simpsons writer John Swartzwelder recently granted his first-ever in-depth interview of his entire career; and it was there that I learned that what Swartzwelder has been doing with his time post-Simpsons is self-publishing a series of zany private-eye-meets-metaphysics novels in the style of Douglas Adams' "Dirk Gently" books, so needless to say that I picked up the first one with great enthusiasm and anticipation. But alas, this reads less like a book from a Simpsons writer and more like a book from the Simpsons' Comic Book Guy, full of groan-inducing Henny Youngman-style ba-DUM-tssh one-liners and other such dated silliness. (Come on, fellow readers, admit it -- now that I've made the comparison, it's impossible to re-read the text and not hear it coming out in the sing-song voice of that infuriating character. THANK yooooou!!!) It's not exactly bad, and I did legitimately get a few chuckles out of it; but Lord, this wasn't nearly what I was expecting from the person widely acknowledged as the funniest writer of what's hands-down the funniest television show in history (or at least if you only count the first 15 seasons). Buyer beware.

Top one liners

I laughed out loud at plenty of points when reading this, so many of the one liners were so on point and so uniquely hilarious. It was absurd, stupid and made no sense- which is mostly how I like my simpsons episodes. However even for me the fact that the story was less than a side note made it hard to keep up with- I mean how many ways does Frank Burly need to get beaten up?

Got about three chapters in and had to stop. While I appreciate humor and nonsensical jokes, the writer leaned too hard on these and not enough on storytelling. I honestly didn't care what happened in the story because I was too distracted the litany of humor. This book was like that friend that thinks they're funnier than they are.

I really appreciate Swartzfelder's work on the Simpsons but I think he works better in a team or, frankly, with a better editor.

Lots of very funny one-liners and the story is moderately interesting, but I was definitely hoping for a little bit more. Finished it drinking a beer at the JFK Buffalo Wild Wings before a flight to Vegas though so that was cool.

A comic novel is hard to write. John Swartzwelder does it by taking a deep breath and exhaling jokes in one, unbroken fervor from beginning to end. Someone described this book as having the most jokes per page of anything they had ever read, and I found that to be true. The jokes come at the extent of most logic or reason; it's more Adult Swim than The Simpsons (the author wrote many of that shows classic episodes). But if you love making fun of the noir detective genre, you will have a grand old time following Frank Burly as he haplessly wanders through time and space solving crime.

Here are samples of lines that made me laugh out loud.

"He asked me how stupid I thought he was. I told him and we stared at each other for awhile."

"One of the detectives made a motion to me. I returned the motion and that's when the scrap started. Nobody motions to me like that."

Basically just 10,000 jokes strung together with a loose plot. Extremely funny.

This is more 3.5 stars but I’m a round up kind of guy. I laughed out loud at some lines in this, more than 98% of comedy fiction and I loved the commitment to a dumb character who learns no lesson to undumb himself at the end. The drawback to that commitment to the bizarre concept being the main thing is there are no emotional stakes whatsoever so it just can’t satisfy on levels other books could. But damn, it’s funny.

One joke stretched way too hard

Bought it on the strength of a brief excerpt. Hilarious in isolation, but not when it's book length. Still has flashes of laugh out loud funny, but not clever enough to get away without changing it up.

This book has about a billion jokes in it and nearly all of them are the kind that make you groan and roll your eyes, and for many of them you chuckle anyway. The plot was silly and ridiculous and the main character was manic and stupid but not in an endearing way, like Homer Simpson. Unfortunately, the author putting his affiliation with The Simpsons on the cover invites this comparison, unflattering though it may be to Detective Frank Burly. This book reminds me of Douglas Adams, if the plots were less well thought out. The Time Machine Did It will be exactly what some people are looking for, but I personally do not plan to continue the series.

This is the first book in the comedic Frank Burly series. The author has also contributed to the Simpsons TV series. This is a comedy detective story. This book's plot has a science fiction premise (and titles of other books in the series suggest others do as well,) however Frank Burly isn't from the future nor does he have other science fiction qualities. So, I'm not sure whether I wouldn't call this a "science fiction mystery" / "science fiction detective" story, this is more about Burly's bumbling rather than a competent effort to solve a mystery.

Frank Burly is a not-too-bright private detective, and he knows it. He knows he doesn't get that much business or the best case because client often go to other detectives. (He also realizes that clients coming into the office building have to walk by other detective offices to reach his, but doesn't seem interested in fixing this problem.)

In this case, he is asked to get a figurine of Justice holding the scales of justice which belonged to the client's father. The father had been the District Attorney who had kept other criminals in check. The problem is that the stolen figurine held documents showing crimes his father committed and the figurine had been given to the police long ago. That resulted in his father leaving office and crime expanding so that the city was a worse place to live. In order to fix the problem, Burly will have to get a hold of Prof. Groggins time machine to go back in time for the figurine. He stumbles along, getting the time machine, losing it, asking a car mechanic to make a time machine according to Burly's limited drawing of it, finally running into the time traveler who brought the figurine to the police in the past, etc.

Personally, I found myself laughing at some of the silliness, but more towards the beginning of the book and not as much later on.