Hick Gumshoe

By J.D. Reed

WARLOCK by Jim Harrison

Delacorte; 262 pages; $13.95

If Henry Miller, S.J. Perelman and Walt Whitman had holed up in a Michigan roadhouse to concoct a mystery yarn, the resulting melange of cosmic erotica, snappish humor and hirsute lyricism might resemble this send-up of the "tecs" by Poet and Novelist Jim Harrison (Farmer, Legends of the Fall). His mock hero, Johnny Lundgren, nicknamed Warlock, is a reluctant Swedish-American gumshoe who has been fired from his job as a foundation executive. He flees to the comforting semi-poverty of rural northern Michigan where irrelevance turns to comic Scandinavian angst. Trysts in his overheated Subaru prove difficult; his forays at gourmet cooking are disasters; insolvency threatens. Then, in the nick of time, Lundgren's wife Diana gets him a job with Dr. Rabun, a prosthetic Edison who designs sexual aids that imitate the motion of swimming porpoises. The doctor's problems: his extensive investments in timber and real estate are being skimmed, and his gay son and free-spending wife are bleeding him dry. Warlock's assignment: remove the bad apples from the barrel.

Lundgren sets out with the family Airedale, a dim, stubborn beast named Hudley who drinks by submerging his head and opening his mouth. An uncertain backwoods cunning helps the make-believe p.i. collar the lumber rustlers, so it's on to Florida to deal with Dr. Rabun's wife and son.

A series of manic bumbles follows. A naive disguise of clipped hair, a new mustache and a tanning parlor's efforts almost gets Lundgren expelled from a "straight" bar in Key West as a gay tourist. Ever the optimist, Lundgren reflects: "Rare, indeed, is a woman or man so sullied that they can't be rebaptized with a few drinks, a pizza, and a shower." Disdaining the private eye's code of resisting advances by female suspects, Warlock goes on an erotic tear. Mrs. Rabun, an art gallery owner, lures him with cocaine, and her friend Laura Fardel offers the glandular and empathetic hick a wealth of kinks. Rabun's son, far from being the homosexual his father said he was, is a tough fishing guide who nearly leaves a spluttering Lundgren for the sharks.

Drowning might have been better than enlightenment. Rabun, the relatives disclose, is a nasty pervert and financial highwayman robbing them of rightful trust funds. From the home front, Lundgren learns that Diana and Rabun have been carrying on in his absence. His cinematic version of revenge brakes just short of disaster.

Harrison's humor in Warlock puts the wrong man in the trench coat. Lundgren is a poet, not a flatfoot, a satyr trying his hoof at logic and deduction. Like most literary fools since Don Quixote saddled up Rosinante, Lundgren is redeemed by his own goodness. Harrison's taste for the bat ty sometimes cloys: "He really wasn't so much a fool as he was giddy about still being alive." Lengthy erotic descriptions tend to become postcoital arias. But Har rison scores well on the firing range: his humor usually strikes in the killing zone. Dashiell Hammett's low-rent realism made the mystery novel fun to read. War lock demonstrates that it is equally enjoy able to spoof.

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