Vic Valentine: Lounge Lizard for Hire by Will Viharo

(pb; 2018: eighth book in the Vic Valentine series)

From the back cover

“My Voodoo Valentine? Vic Valentine has finally retired from the private eye racket. And since his beautiful, new bi-sexual, black belt-burlesque-dancer bride, Ava Margarita Valentina Valdez Valentine, who may also be a witch or a vampire or both, has a mysterious and possibly nefarious source of seemingly endless wealth, he no longer walks dogs for income, either. Vic is finally living the life of his wildest dreams! Until the Universe sucker-punches him yet again, and it suddenly melts into a noir nightmare. . .

“First a Yakuza hitman from Mrs.Valentine’s past shows up in Seattle with a score to settle. She conjures demons from another dimension to not only protect them, but to spice up their sex life (or hers, anyway). The ghost of Vic’s dead friend Doc Schlock still haunts him, literally. His old pal Ivar the sailor statue starts talking, and walking. And then there’s the doppelganger of a young Vic suddenly popping up here and there around town, setting Vic up for a showdown with his younger self.

“But no matter what happens next, the show must go on.”

Review

Fans of David Lynch, werewolves, Mexican wrestling films, vampires, yakuza flicks, actor Christian Slater and hypersexual violence may find themselves reveling in this surrealistic tale, where one reality swirls into another what-the-FRELL alternate reality, sucking readers further into Vic’s headworlds, imagined or real.

This is an excellent, gory, sexually explicit neo-psychedelic pulp novel, much like its predecessor, Vic Valentine: International Man of Misery, although Lounge ups the crazy what-is-real ante to the triple nth degree. While this works as a standalone story, readers familiar with previous Vic Valentine works (starting with Love Stories Are Too Violent For Me) might enjoy Lounge more, as Viharo spin-cycles through a lot of the characters, elements, storylines and themes that formed the first seven books in this series and other books penned by this distinctive, consistently fascinating author. 

Followed by Vic Valentine: Space Cadet.