The Bill Walton Mysteries: Friend of the Devil by James Kirkland

 Published 2019 by Meathouse Publishing

Jerry taught Bill the power of improvisation. If the Grateful Dead simply played their album from start to finish, their concerts would be thirty-five minutes long. But they didn’t just play the album. They improvised. A lot. That’s how a three-minute song became a three-hour exploration of the universe. And that’s how Bill lived his life.

Standing nearly seven feet tall, Bill Walton was one of the tallest Deadheads ever to dance at a show. In James Kirkland’s Friend of the Devil, he may also be the tallest detective in crime fiction.

Bill Walton. Crime fiction. That alone should tell you whether this book is your kind of weird.

The premise is gloriously absurd: Bill Walton as a detective in a mystery threading the basketball acumen of the high pick and roll, bathtub kombucha and the chaotic comedy of the Grateful Dead. The gimmick turns the knobs up to eleven, sets the controls for the heart of the sun and refuses to apologize for the approach. It could have been a train wreck. It isn’t. Instead, Kirkland turns it into something genuinely entertaining.

I particularly love the disclaimer on the opening page. “This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, living or dead—including those based on real people—as well as characterizations, incidents, actions, opinions, experiences and journeys are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.” Don’t worry, James. Even in the overly litigious world in which we live, and even with many peripheral elements of the setting and storyline rooted in truth, it is hard to imagine even the least scrupulous ambulance chaser coming after you. To do so would be akin to suing Groucho Marx or Salvadore Dali for pushing the boundaries of the theater of the absurd.

Still, let’s get something straight. Kirkland is not aiming for the literary grandeur of Murakami, Brontë or Pynchon. This is a breezy, funny and surprisingly nimble lysergic fever-dream mashup, as if an Aaron Sorkin script were filtered through an episode of Gilmore Girls, Bugs Bunny and an issue of Mad Magazine. Kirkland knows exactly how strange this setup is, and that self-awareness gives the book much of its charm.

A smart choice is telling the story through basketball commentator, Dave Pasch, who serves as the steady voice amid Walton’s cosmic sprawl. Through Pasch’s eyes, Walton becomes a head-shaking trickster-sage, ridiculous one minute and oddly profound the next. That balance keeps the novel from slipping into parody. Walton is exaggerated, but never entirely unbelievable within the world Kirkland creates.

What also helps is that Kirkland understands the deeper connection between Walton and the Dead. The Grateful Dead references are not just decoration. I do not know whether Kirkland ever caught a show, but he certainly captures the wackiest elements of Deadhead culture in the best possible light. Improvisation is the governing idea here. This version of Walton moves through the story the way the best “Playin’ in the Band” jams wander and digress yet somehow remain purposeful.

I came to the book with essentially no detective-fiction background. While I will happily watch a breezy BBC mystery, I had never cracked the cover of Holmes, Christie or Marlowe. Perhaps that is why I enjoyed how little Friend of the Devil cares about strict genre expectations. This is not a tightly wound procedural. Its appeal lies instead in the writing voice, the adrenal pace and the sheer pleasure of wading inside such an oddball premise.

It would be easy to dismiss Friend of the Devil as a novelty. That would be a mistake. Beneath the goofiness is a writer with a fantastic ear for tone and comic timing.

For readers of Grateful Dead books, this occupies a strange and playful corner of the shelf. It is not biography, scholarship or oral history. It offers something looser, weirder and more playful. I want more.

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