Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies

Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies not only pays homage to American comic strips, it goes one better — the book is itself a comic strip told in novel form. Like the funnies, this novel teems with comic grotesqueries, the bizarre and the far-fetched, criminals of all persuasions, tricky twists of irony, and many an amazing adventure.

In New York City, 1936, the legendary cartoonist Walter Geebus — self-confessed forger, back-stabber, misanthrope, and hot-goods passer — is hospitalized with a mysterious ailment. Was the old bastard poisoned — again? Although Geebus lies stricken, possibly forever, his popular comic strip about an orphan boy and his smart-aleck talking dog must go on, as it has every day for the last forty years in hundreds of newspapers. But who can ghost the great Geebus and satisfy millions of avid readers who turn each morning to "Derby Dugan" for comic relief in hard times? The frantic search for his replacement conjures a world of colorful and memorable characters. De Haven's Depression-era New York is a wondrous and electric place, a tabloid town of swank nightclubs, seedy hotels, and cozy brothels — an Art Deco metropolis rife with gangsters, tycoons, gossip mongers, and dazed men and women waiting on long breadlines.