"4 stars ... This hilarious prize-winning thriller is set in New York where
Vernon, an Australian journalist in cahoots with his small dog (whose
poetic-cum-philosophic observations punctuate Vernon's narrative),
decides to pursue a wild affair, instead of his oddly successful
career in journalism. Giving up work, he investigates a friend's
sinister disappearance. When his newspaper starts suing, even kidnapping
him, Vernon suspects his columns had, in the past, betrayed financial
secrets. Eclectic, paranoid and barbed, this is a brilliantly original,
appealing orgy of intelligence, humour and lust." -- (UK) Mail
on Sunday
"Cohen's loopy, hilarious,
perceptive, racy and sexy murder mystery ...manages to sustain the
suspense of a thriller, the panache of a stand-up comic and the
skill of a serious satirist.
"Just when you think, too, that Cohen's wacky humour may have pushed
the boundary, he drops us back into the seriousness of the murder
mystery, or the machinations of high-finance swindles, or the workings
of a modern-day newspaper.
"Some of Muffy's observations are worthy of that highest of honours
-- to be pinned to the fridge.
"This novel is a refreshing breeze through Australian writing. The
tension is handles with the skill of a five-ball juggler, the language
sharp and the tone unwavering.
"The
Blindman's Hat is
great fun. A hoot." -- The
Australian
"Funny and compelling"
-- (Sydney) Daily
Telegraph
"Cohen certainly knows how to spin an outrageous yarn"
-- Sydney Morning Herald
"Imagine a novel that
reads like an extended, off-the-wall cartoon strip, a textual version
of Wallace
and Grommet, in which
man and dog find themselves in New York at the mercy of inexplicable
events and bizarre encounters. Imagine an expatriate Australian
journalist called Vernon who is on the run from the American newspaper
he used to work for and a dog called Muffy who is prone to philosophise
on human habits and foibles. Imagine that a blindman called Steve
goes missing and that Vernon, his girlfriend Dida and Muffy get
caught up in the search for the missing man. Imagine that anything
can happen and very likely will. This winner of last year's Vogel
Prize is mad-cap absurdism at its most mad-cap" -- (Melbourne) Age
"The two narrators
of The
Blindman's Hat complement
each other well: Vernon is impulsive, anxious, playful and paranoid,
while Muffy's philosophical reflections, scattered through the novel,
reveal a much darker, more complex sensibility.
"The Blindman's Hat
has a cool, charming, cartoonish quality from first to last, and
the exuberant paranoia of a caper movie..." Philippa Hawker, Australian Book Review
"As is often the way
with outsiders from the boondocks who fall in love with the big
city, the young Australian novelist Bernard Cohen brings an engagingly
goofy perspective of gee-whizzery to this fairytale of New York,
a more than slightly tongue-in-cheek murder mystery that belongs
on the same shelves as Armistead Maupin and Tama Janowitz rather
than Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler. Cohen writes himself
into the story as Vernon, a young Australian journalist, whose chronic
absence from work on account of a serious case of love elicits an
alarming and extravagantly disproportionate response from his employers.
Setting out to learn the reason why with his girlfriend Dida (a
mobile telephone technician who probably Knows Too Much) and a cute
little white dog called Muffy (a definite blood relation of Asta
from the Thin
Man stories), he soon finds himself up to his button-down
collar in hooky Wall Street finaglings etc -- but as they say in
the Naked Gun
movies, that's not important right now. Style and characters are
all." -- (Glasgow)
Herald
