Order FISH BITES COP! here
Daddy always called cops ''Lloyds,'' and Jack thought that was their real name until he turned 18. Turned out it was short for ''mongoloids,'' which seemed harsh for a whole hour after he first deciphered it.
Every book reviewer is secretly suspicious of short story collections. If they tell you they're not, they're lying. When done properly, short stories are mysterious and life-affirming little things, but a collection is also the first thing a writer is trying to sell you. So the quality is the available material on the market varies a lot. I had a good feeling about David James Keaton's FISH BITES COP! even if I hadn't read anything by him before. The man I amicably call DJK has been a veteran of the short fiction scene for several years, won more than one award for his tales and had longer publications to his credit already. FISH BITES COP! is a collection that not only takes a swing at law enforcement institutions, but at every form of authority there is. It's funny, enlightening and oh, so wrong.
My favourite story in FISH BITES COP! doesn't deal with the police at all. KILLING COACHES is what happens to your stereotypical high school story when you turn it inside you. The protagonist is not a nerd, but an enthusiastic jock and a psychopath. He is allergic to authority figures, yet he participates in every sport offered in order to take a shot at the coach. David James Keaton's description of the authority figures in this story (and pretty much everywhere in FISH BITES COP!) seethes with disgust and contempt. They are clownish figures who gave up on what made them authority figures in the first place. They are fat, lazy, clumsy and hilarious to the objecive observer. KILLING COACHES revisits the high school trauma story in a much more original and liberating way than the stereotypical underdog story.
There is a lot of material in FISH BITES COP! Over 30 short stories, which is a lot to take in. The collection drifts a little bit from the theme of ''bashing authorities'' that it promotes itself with. There are horror stories in there that have nothing to do with police or authority figures. They're great stories, though. It's just that the scope of the collection is so large and ambitious that it's difficult to keep the focus and enthusiasm you began to read it. Not every story was a hit with me, but there were a couple standouts that stayed with me: TROPHIES, KILLING COACHES, LIFE EXPECTANCY IN A TRUNK, BURNING DOWN DJs, QUEEN EXCLUDER, CLAM DIGGER and NINE COPS KILLED FOR A GOLDFISH CRACKER are all memorable. Your run-of-the-mill short story collection doesn't count as many standouts as FISH BITES COP!
''Do you hate all police officers?''
''I hate all cops, firefighters, paramedics, bounty hunters, security guards...and probably astronauts.''
A lot of hacks are going to try and sell you their weak stuff using catchphrases like ''unadorned prose''. It's important to read authors like David James Keaton to understand the difference between deliberately unadorned prose and crap writing. DJK writes fiction like Henry Rollins writes letters to politicans and celebrities, with razor sharp irony and a violent sense of humor that defines his prose with an jagged edge that few author authors can brag to have. FISH BITES COP! is a bit of an endurance run at times, but there is enough standout material in there to keep you going. When dealing with short fiction, you should definitely choose who you're paying attention to and David James Keaton is worth your time.
