I’ve been a fan of James Lileks for years, although I’ve rarely read any of his newspaper stuff. His daily personal blog, The Bleat is appointment reading (especially now that he has the RSS feed working) and I loved his podcast The Diner(currently on hiatus). Lileks is best described as an archaeologist of recent public culture with his loving of the ephemera of the early-mid 1900s. He has pages dedicated to old postcards or matchbooks. He gives an amusing and interesting look at our recent past that many people simply ignore. So, when Lileks announced that he was writing a mystery trilogy, I was interested. The first book in that trilogy is now available and I loved Graveyard Special. Let’s see what it’s about.

Robert Thompson is your run of the mill late night diner waiter in college town Minnesota in 1980. He’s an art major who isn’t quite sure what he wants to do with his life, which is why he’s at the overnight shift in a diner. The story starts with the cook (who’s taking a break by huffing some Reddy Whip) dies without anyone noticing for several minutes. While the death is easily explained by the huffing, it turns out that the cook was actually shot and we have a murder, not an OD.

The death of the cook is the axis upon which the story revolves. Robert hangs out with his friends and roommates. The pinball tournaments are replaced my Asteroids tournaments. And Robert has some interesting experiences with women. One of the main threads is Robert being smitten with a reporter (Tara) who gets in touch with him for a story about the shooting. As the case expands wider than anyone expected, Robert tries to use his connection to the case as a lever to a relationship with Tara.

The story itself is not a straight ahead mystery, it’s more of a coming of age type novel where we follow Robert around for a couple hundred pages until the mystery is quickly and tidily finished up over the last couple chapters. The wrap up was a little quick and felt like Lileks only remembered that he needed to do something about the mystery as he was finishing up the novel. There were a couple minor goofs (including one that made me question whether we were in 1980 or 1984).

Overall, I loved the book even with the hasty wrapup to the mystery. The characters were extremely engaging and I didn’t want to leave this group of characters. Lileks could have removed the mystery from the story completely without affecting my enjoyment of the book at all. The characters are wonderfully real and flawed. The observations are fun and Lileks really makes us feel a part of the gang in the early 80s. The flaws are minor in comparison to the wonderful writing. I’m looking forward to the sequels. Highly recommended.