Whale Season

November 14, 2005
A late-night Christmas Eve card game with a Jesus impersonator triggers misadventures galore in Kelby's screwball comedy with a dark side. In the dinky town of Whale Season, a faded (and whale-free) Florida tourist trap, various citizens mull over the lows life's brought them to. Sheriff Trot Jeeter and his best friend/oldest rival, Leon, a used RV salesman, form a love square with Carlotta, Leon's erstwhile girlfriend, and Dagmar, the owner of a local strip club and Leon's ex-wife (Trot loves them both, but Carlotta most). After winning a luxury RV from "Jesus" in poker, Leon gets drunk and burns down his trailer; everyone figures he's dead. Meanwhile, Jesus (who's really a serial killer named Dr. Ricardo Garcia) has decided that Jimmy Ray (a musician at Dagmar's club—and likely her father) will be his next victim. The nonstop comedy jives weirdly with the characters' backstories and the threat of grisly murder, best exemplified during a scene in which Jesus vows to give Jimmy "the Hallmark Card of Death," Jimmy finally acknowledges his paternity and everyone, weeping with joy, decides to eat French toast. Shaggy, silly, a little bit soggy—but as a holiday diversion, this is mighty good fun. (It's also a big shift for Kelby, who, writing as Nicole Kelby, offered up the luminous, haunting In the Company of Angels
in 2001.)

December 1, 2005
There is a land referred to by its residents as -heaven's waiting room - where the sunsets are as pink as a flamingo's rear end (or Pepto-Bismol). Yes, it's Florida, and Kelby ("In the Company of Angels") proves there is indeed room for yet another Florida novel populated by zanies. The novel opens on Christmas day as Leon Pettit plays cards with a man claiming to be Jesus. At stake is an RV with all the trimmings that costs considerably more than a couple of doublewides. Leon wins, but he's convinced that it's the start of another bad day, since all the luck he's had in his life so far could be crammed comfortably into the tight jeans of the girl he's currently dating. And, sure enough, it turns out that Jesus is actually Dr. Ricardo Garcia, a Cuban/Polish doctor on a killing spree; or, as he likes to think of it, giving folks a leg up on salvation. Kelby manages to make the Florida shtick seem fresh and overlays it with a patina of spiritual yearning in a cross between the work of Carl Hiaasen and Christopher Moore. For all larger public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 9/15/05.]" -Bob Lunn, Kansas City P.L., MO"

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2005
Floridian Ricardo Garcia thinks he's Jesus Christ. But the second-generation Cuban doctor is far from a saint. In fact, he's a serial killer. That's but one of the revelations in this quirky--and, at times, creepy--comic yarn set in fictional Whale Harbor, Florida (where there are, in fact, no whales). Kelby's -character-driven offering has a skimpy story line involving murdered senior citizens and a hefty sum of shrink-wrapped cash stashed in a stolen RV. The cast includes former cheerleader Dagmar, who runs a "Naughty but Nice" strip club, her ex-husband Leon, owner of Lucky's RV Round-up and a pretty good poker player (thanks to a strategically placed mirror), and Sheriff Trot Jeeter, an unremarkable man in a perpetual state of unrequited love. And, of course, there's stringy-haired Jesus, clad in a white sheet, with requisite scars on his upper forehead and the tops of his hands. No doubt some readers will find the idea of a slayer disguised as a savior a bit irreverent, but fans of Tim Dorsey's Serge Storms novels (also about a goofy serial killer) will feel right at home.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)