New Book Alert: Rite Judgement: Heads Roll-Corpses Dance (The DaDa Detective Agency Book 2) by Pete Adams; Bizarre Farcical Absurd Mystery That Is Short on Plot But Long On Tone and Theme
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: Pete Adams' Rite Judgement Heads Roll-Corpses Dance is the second book that I am reading this month that prefers to ignore the heart, slightly focus on the head, but heads straight for the funny bone. However, this and Lakshmi and The River of Truth take different approaches in their pursuit of laughter.
Lakshmi and The River of Truth was a savage biting political satire disguised as a fantasy. The satire is obvious as various characters and situations in this dream world are intentional parodies of people and events surrounding the real world.
Rite Judgement's humor is less abrupt and more fanciful and whimsical. While there are some satirical moments and hidden important themes, the characters and situations are absurd and farcical. There isn't as much of a recognizable plot as there are excuses to throw a bunch of odd silly things together to create a whole book that focuses on the silliness and bury important messages inside of it.. Let's put it this way, if Lakshmi and The River of Truth is Saturday Night Live, then Rite Judgement Heads Roll-Corpses Dance is Monty Python's Flying Circus. No one is better than the other. Both are hilarious, they just have different ways of making people laugh.
The main characters in Rite Judgement are former Police Detective Jack "Jane" Austen and his wife former Detective Superintendent Amanda "Mandy" Austen. Even though they are retired, they still thirst for adventure. That's why they formed the DaDa Detective Agency named for their other nicknames "Dick" for Jack (which Mandy jokes is perfect for him) and "Duck" for Mandy (which she objects to because she is not a bird and even if she were "why a f$#@_&g duck?").
The duo's latest case involves the appearance of St. Winifred, a martyred saint who has reappeared in modern day sans head. (Her head is on a conductor's stand.) As if it wasn't weird enough, the saint plays the violin and dances even though she's headless.
Then there's a religious group called Umble Pie who is less than umble because they seem to be overly involved with the British government. There is also an actor posing as the Pope when the real deal ends up missing, a parrot that speaks Italian, and a goofy politician with the name of Pimple (yes you read that right) and his wife Crumpet. If you squint, you might be able to put these weird situations together and find a coherent plot.
The focus of the book is less on plot and more on tone.Situations happen that are too broad to be believable and the stabs at mystery solving are more resolved through contrived coincidence than any form of detection.
In fact the main couple, Jack and Mandy Austen's disagreements and personal digs towards each other make them seem more like a sitcom couple than a pair of detectives. Jack is a pompous twit and Mandy's sarcasm brings him down to Earth. Think less Temperance Brennan and Seeley Booth from Bones and more Ray and Debra Barone from Everybody Loves Raymond uh with deductive reasoning and a license to investigate criminal activity of course.
Besides the humor of the bickering pair of crime solvers, the whole point of the book is not to have a straightforward mystery. Things don't have a linear structure. Conversations and incidents take place that have no real bearing in the overall narrative.
The clue of the overall tone of the book is in the name, The DaDa Detective Agency. The name is a reference to the Dada Art Movement that began after WWI. Those involved with the movement rejected logic, aesthetics, and reason and embraced nonsense, irrationality, and anti-bourgeois views in their works. Even the name itself was coined by using a baby's words evoking childishness and absurdity.
The works included collages, sound poetry, cut up writing, and sculpture.
Artists in the movement included Hugo Ball, Max Ernst, Hannah Hoch, and Beatrice Wood among others.
Dadaism was an influence on later movements like Surrealism, Abstract Art, Avant Garde, Pop Art, Nouveau Realism, and others. Chances are if it's a weird way of looking at the world, the Dadaists made it.
Rite Judgement is right in the Dadaist style. A headless dancing corpse is treated not as a miracle but more like a money making opportunity and a booking on reality television. It's a ridiculous moment made even more ridiculous because of the behavior of the people around it.
There are groups of Holy Hairdressers and another group called Fishers of Men (which the narrative tells us "does exactly what it says on the can.") Of course it's hard to take seriously an organization that controls everything called Umble Pie.
If there is a point, Rite Judgement is mocking religious institutions and society's dependence on them. It also mocks how those institutions exploit their symbols with the intentions of gaining money, followers, and governmental power. The book just does it in a way that plays the laughs before the message.
There is another theme that is more subtle than religious exploitation: that of class conflict. There is a constant allusion to spring throughout the book, which heralds new beginnings, rebirth, and awakening from what is considered cold and dead.
The Arab Spring anti-government uprisings in the Arab World, a grassroots campaign that was spread throughout social media, in the early 2010's is referred to.
Igor Stravinsky's composition Rite of Spring keeps coming in and out of the book like a motif. The composition was a ballet depicting primitive people engaging a ritual sacrifice on a young maiden. (Fans of Disney's Fantasia may remember the composition in the animated segment depicting the evolution of Earth from the formation of the land to the death of the dinosaurs.)
Reportedly, the Rite of Spring ballet was so controversial that riots broke out in protest and defense of it. Stravinsky's music was favored by many revolutionaries and considered the music of the Russian Revolution.
The motif of Rite of Spring adds to the subtle theme of earlier conventions passing away and dying out to make way for newer ideals. That older constraints like class distinction, religious schisms, and oligarchy politics are not working. If they aren't working, then the book suggests that the way must be made for something new. A return to spring if you will.
All of this is hidden inside a book with a headless dancing saint.
