Joey Slinger’s debut novel, Punch Line, hit the shelves last fall, but you probably still haven’t heard about it. Slinger writes a twice-weekly satire column for The Toronto Star, and it’s about time that he wrote his first novel, considering that every other writer in the country whose name has greater-than-zero probability of recognition has already got a novel, a memoir, or both.
So Slinger’s book has finally arrived, and it seems like no one cares, which is a little bit sad and a little bit expected. Perhaps it’s a testament to the sorry marketing strategies of Canadian publishing houses, or the weak CanLit star system.
Nevertheless, Punch Line is a quite decent first novel, swinging wildly through the adventures of 81-year-old Ballantine, an old codger on a mission of vengeance. Three “assholes” scared his wife to death on the subway and Ballantine wants to kill them-with a bungee cord. That’s the premise, admittedly a bit lame, but forgive the flapdoodle about the bungee cord and skim your way to the good stuff.
By the end of the second chapter, we’re nearly done with the revenge plot. Ballantine has moved into The Cloister, an assisted-living residence populated with loony-bin geriatrics. Word of Ballantine’s homicidal antics gets around and The Cloister’s senile residents decide to form an elite assassination squad. Think Kill Bill meets The Golden Girls, with a dash of Catch-22 zaniness for good measure.
Masquerading as a pack of insane fuddies, the old guys and gals at The Cloister embark on a murderous crusade against bourgeois assholes everywhere. Along the way, they’re involved in plenty of money-laundering and penny-stock schemes, illegal arms deals, gunfights, car chases, and counter-espionage. At every corner, they dodge the nursing home’s evil director and an over-the-hill cop, both of whom suspect the old folks are up to no good.
At its best, the book is funny, even ticklishly charming. There’s something perversely entertaining about seniors building bombs in the basement of their nursing home. You might laugh-maybe not out loud, but probably demurely-in a way that would allow you to protect that finely honed cynical façade.
At its worst, Punch Line has some really bad, well, punch lines. And stupid puns. And absurd plot twists that seem to be there just for the sake of being absurd. In the end, a decent first novel is a significant accomplishment for Slinger. Or any journalist, really-journalists not really being all that known or respected for their creativity (Ed: Ouch!).
At the very least, Slinger can hope to secure a small, devoted following for his fiction, much like the one that reads his column. And he can cross his fingers for mildly successful sales of the book-if it ever manages to garner some publicity.
