Highway 61 Resurfaced

I've now read all of Bill Fitzhugh's novels and think he just gets better and better. This is his second book starring Rick Shannon. This time Mr. Shannon is caught in the middle of a old time Mississippi family feud, while trying to solve a murder. Also involved is a quartet of octogenarian blues artists who may or may not have recorded some songs together about 50 years ago. In typical Fitzhugh style is a mix of totally strange characters. A worthy read. Thumbs up Bill.

I have never read anything else, by Fitzhugh, or anyone else, that has such delightfully hysterical and and darkly comedic scenes that I was so strongly reminded, admiringly, of the towering classic in that genre, "A Confederacy of Dunces." Highway 61 should be enjoyed by anyone with a good sense of humour, an appreciation for the odd and twisted crevices of life, and an interest in gaining insight into the life and culture of the region that birthed the blues, the fabled Mississippi Delta. As other professional and reader reviewers for this book have already summarized the basic plot, I will not repeat that. But some of Fitzhugh's scenes are simply too funny not to want to share a bit of. For example, the fight that erupts in the funeral parlor between the surviving wife and a call girl who have each come to pay their respects to the deceased (the same noble fellow who had a passion for peanut butter and Labrador Retrievers)... Before the dust has settled on this fast-paced scene, the funeral parlor has been turned upside down, the deceased has been ignominiously trampled, and our hero has danced furiously around the coffin trying to elude further blows from a flying purse. I am not certain what enables Fitzhugh to provide us with such deadly accurate and comic insight into the inner-workings of the warped mind of the meth-amphetamine crazed, will-do-anything-to be-accepted-by-his-girlfriend's-affluent-family, former college football star, cum murderer, but Fitzhugh does this as no one can. This poor character is caught up in a vicious cycle of self-destruction, but being allowed to share his addled and doomed logic is nothing short of a riot. When this character's quest for the mythical recordings led him to a lawyer's office, and his misguided efforts to break in and blow open a safe run awry and left him unconscious, only to re-group in time to kidnap the lawyer, Fitzhugh had me in stitches from laughing. Aside from the hilarious comedy that we have come to expect from Fitzhugh, and his great charcaters (including some pretty cool and profound old black musicians), I also am appreciative of Fitzhugh's apparent goal of leaving something solid with his reader. Something more than a pure romp. Sort of like a good Southern meal, Fitzhugh entertains you and then leaves you with something that sticks to your mental ribs. As all reviewers have said, Hiway 61 leaves the reader with a far deeper appreciation for the lifestyle, predjudices and cultural setting that spawned the blues. But Fitzhugh achieves something even more difficult and delicate with this book - his vivid writing here constitutes that rarest of invitations: a ticket to visit a place and time that the reader would otherwise never have seen. For me, that place and time was best evoked by the lively scene inside the doors of the small, ramshackle, smoky, black honky-tonks that used to populate the roadsides of the Mississippi Delta. Fitzhugh's rich and descriptive languag

Historical only when the main character is discussing rock and roll or the blues. Otherwise this is funny fiction with a good mystery. Bill has stepped up a notch in that the content is more fluid than his first books. Not that I'm not eager to read them all again, I am.

The very first scene in HIGHWAY 61 RESURFACED involves a Labrador retriever. More than that you really don't need to know, other than perhaps the scene also involves peanut butter --- no, that's too much information. Suffice it to say that the first scene is hilarious beyond words, and just leave it at that. The initial scene of any book tends to be emblematic (mostly because this is what readers read when they are going through the bookstore). But the Labrador retriever scene is even more so, and that's saying something, because HIGHWAY 61 RESURFACED is not really a "dog book." It is, emphatically, a "cat book." One of the main characters is an ever-so-reluctantly rescued feline, a kitten with the sobriquet "Crusty Boogers," named after its serious, chronic, and permanent sinus infection. But that's another issue altogether. No, the bit with the Labrador retriever is important because the book itself is not too much dissimilar from a large, friendly, overbearing, clumsy dog. Although HIGHWAY 61 RESURFACED --- like the Lab itself --- has many sterling qualities, it is a big sloppy mess of a book. It is endearing enough and eager to please, but it tends to lumber around a bit, and is never what you would call subtle or overly averse to knocking cups off of coffee tables. HIGHWAY 61 RESURFACED is in the tradition of Carl Hiaasen (who writes a back-cover blurb), but it's in an entirely different world. Its hero is Rick Shannon, full-time DJ for the last independent radio station in Vicksburg, Mississippi (and maybe in the entire world, by the time you read this). Shannon also heads Rockin' Vestigations, for which he investigates cheating husbands and solves musical mysteries. At issue here is the fate of a long-lost blues recording --- a lost piece of the Mississippi past, on reel-to-reel. The tape --- if it exists --- has been sitting in the back of someone's safe deposit box for fifty years. If it can be found, digitally remastered, released on a CD, and sold at an independent record store near you, it is worth quite a few nickels. The recording --- known by blues historians everywhere as the "Blind, Crippled, and Crazy sessions," after the nicknames of the artists who created them --- is somewhere out there on Highway 61, and Rick Shannon is the one who's hired to help find it. The Shannon character isn't especially interesting or compelling, unfortunately. But at least he's not that bright, either, which helps to move the story along. Also looking for the Blind, Crippled and Crazy sessions --- this book is nothing if not politically incorrect, joyfully so --- is an ex-convict named Clarence who has his own interest in getting his hands on the tapes, and maybe on the blues musicians who recorded them. HIGHWAY 61 RESURFACED is much more of a dark comedy than a mystery, which matches up well with the talents of author Bill Fitzhugh. Outside of the hilarious first few chapters, most of the laughs come from the incompetence of a hit man, who su

I loved this book. Fitzhugh has a remarkable ear for the South and is a talented dialect writer. Combine that with his tradmark wacky humor, his knowledge of music (with an emphasis on Blues and Rock), and a satifying solution to the mystery. These all add up to another wonderful read. I especially like the way Fitzhugh portrays Southern racism, with an emphasis on the 50's and 60's. The author doesn't preach or beat us over the head with a PC stick. Rather he shows the world to us through characters and their actions, allowing us to draw our own conclusions.