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Summary: oyster blues should be a movie!
Review: a friend traded this with me for the last juror.i couldn't put it down! delightful, different, and touching.
Rating: 
Summary: An Appetizing Debut
Review: Comparisons to Carl Hiassen and Elmore Leonard notwithstanding, Mr. McClelland has dished up a deliciously bizarre array of characters in "Oyster Blues." Intelligently written and plotted out, this novel is not the laugh out loud type of humor so typical of other Florida writers. From the first page, you realize that Mr. McClelland will deftly disguise the plot of his story until the final course is presented in the last chapter. I enjoyed and I believe you will also. Bon Appetit!
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Summary: Humor mostly works. Funny but uneven.
Review: Harry Harper has blown his assignment as a private eye, lost his job as an English professor, and gotten drunk enough that he shot a chicken through the wall and thought he'd murdered someone. Jane Ellen Ashley thought she'd murdered someone too--the powerful (and evil) state senator's son. Now both are on the run. For both, the problems pile up. Harper takes up with a pair of gangsters while Ashley becomes the love interest of a Cuban/Bahamian gangster accountant who will stop at nothing to have her--and believes that Ashley is the only way for him to prove his manhood to his Cuban co-workers. Add a farmer hitman and a man with a plastic tube for his throat and you have the makings of a very funny story. According to the back cover copy, author Michael McClelland is an English professor, which explains both part of the appeal and part of the problem with this first novel. McClelland works hard at his humor and it shows--sometimes working brilliantly and sometimes seeming forced and awkward. His author intrusions too are hit and miss. For example, some may find the digression into the fate of the dead chicken knee-splittingly funny. I found it merely a distraction from the story. Perhaps the biggest problem was that our introduction to Harry showed a man nothing like the Harry we came to know through the novel. This wasn't character growth, it was simply a different Harry. If McClelland wanted to do this, he should have justified or explained it. Bottom line, there's a lot to like and some to dislike about this book. The dumb but well-meaning giant is a cliche (but maybe that's what McClelland is trying to show--it's tough to know with English professors). I hope McClelland does more research and gets an editor for his next book (weapon calibers rarely change from 38s to 45s and revolvers really don't have safeties), but I still found myself drawn into OYSTER RULES, laughing at McClelland's jokes, and appreciating the clever scheme our heros must confront. I'm going to keep my eyes open for his next novel.
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Summary: A Weird and Wonderful Book
Review: I read Oyster Blues for the first time in a Milwaukee hotel room on a laptop, in the dead of winter. Everyone who wandered into the room wanted to read over my shoulder, first out of curiosity to see what an e-book looked like, then because the story is so weird and wonderful that after a few paragraphs you want to read "just one more page" - and then another, and another. I got hooked on Oyster Blues after my husband read the entire first chapter out loud to me. I was enthralled. I finished the book and then read it again back home, savoring my favorite parts. I won't even attempt to describe the plot, except to say that anyone who loves books will love Jane Ellen Ashley, the dirt-poor oyster-shucker with electric-blue eyes who loves nothing more than to read -- until she meets Happy Harry Harper. My only wish for Oyster Blues is that someone will publish a paperback edition, so I can pack it in my pool bag and read it all over again this summer.
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Summary: Move over Barry, Hiaasen, Hall and Shames-New Kids in Town
Review: In the traditiion of Carl Hiassen, James W. Hall, Laurence Shames and Dave Barry's works of fiction comes this little gem. Part mystery, part crime, part sexy, 100% funny Florida novel. Michael McClelland steps up to the plate and delivers a great debut novel. In the fashion of the other writers, there's the Mob, murder, a man, a woman and a lot of misunderstandings.
Very enjoyable read--pick this one up!!
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Summary: HAPPY HARRY HARPER HILARIOUS HERO!
Review: It all started one morning when Happy Harry Harper woke up with a hangover to discover two bugs making whoopee on his bedroom wall in the Dominican Republic. Naturally, he pulled out his gun and shot them, and in doing so also put into play a very funny and enjoyable thriller. It seems like the bullet intended for the cockroaches went through the wall and also killed Campèon, his landlady's "lover". Harry becomes a hilarious man on the run, and in order to get out of the country and back to the U. S. agrees to pilot a boat with a body back to Florida. Along his journey, he collides with Jane Ellen Ashley, an oyster-schucker who is also on the run. Together they manage to complicate the plot with skullduggery, political corruption and all the other things that make novels about South Florida such fun. OYSTER BLUES is the author's debut novel, and it's a great start. I look forward to his next one. He has a great way with creating enjoyable characters and then providing them with dialogue that always rings true. If you enjoy Hiaasen, Leonard or Barry you should really enjoy this one, too. It earn my ***** stars!
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Summary: A wonderful genre bender
Review: Michael McClelland's novel Oyster Blues has been compared to many other florida crime novels, and his writing to some of the genre's greats, names like Hiassen and Leonard. This is in many ways a fair descrption, however what I found to be the books strongenst suit was its truly rare knack for toying with it's adopted genre while embracing it at the same time, creating in essence, something new.
The humor is wonderful, the lack of dialogue intentional, and the characters memorable but what I enjoyed most about McClelland's writing was it's willingness to conform to a genre for the express purpose of molding that genre into something new and personal. Free form writing, writing that follows no rules or genre constraints is interesting, it's admirable and sometimes even successful. But this book and it's author mix the rebellious nature of genre-free writing (of which there is very little truth be told) with the organization and odd characterizations of a true Florida crime novel. The results are something quite special. We'll all be watching for this author's next effort.
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Summary: A Riotous Romp
Review: Reading a book this funny, this slyly plotted, this salty and satiric, this madcap and quirky, this irreverent, this outrageously uplifting -- well, hell, if it ain't a crime, then it sure ought to be required reading for anyone suffering the blues, "the oyster blues," that is (smile).
Since others have summarized so well here, I'll simply say I finished the book and then started reading it again. It's that good and that much fun. You'll relish that the a***oles get their due, that the guy gets the girl, that a treasure of a bay along the forgotten coast of Florida is preserved, that sometimes life works out just fine.
Give yourself a treat. Read this book. It goes down as easy as cotton candy with the taste of finely broiled shrimp. Move over Dorsey, Leonard, and Hiaasen. If you don't, McClelland will simply elbow his way in (which I think he's already done).
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Summary: Another Trip to the Sunshine State
Review: So I'm a sucker for this Florida stuff. It seems every month or so I run into another author taking on the wild and wacky turf of the Sunshine State. The latest find was Michael McClelland's Oyster Blues. This is a tale of near murders, dirty politics, not so bright mobsters and of course a couple of clueless lovesick bookworms who stumble onto a conspiracy. Nothing groundbreaking here, but a lot of wacky, off the wall charm. McClelland creates some fun and memorable, though utterly unbelievable, characters and puts them in a clever and enjoyable plot to make a fun read. My only qualm is I think at points McClelland may have tried too hard to insert some wackiness in his book. At one point Jane, the female lead, comes off as way to naive when answering some basic medical questions for a girl as well read as herself, yet later in the book figures out the entire conspiracy based on an obscure reference to a specific fish.
The inevitable comparisons will come so, no this book is not up to par with Hiaasen at his best, or even Tim Dorsey, but the potential is absolutely there. For a first time novelist, this was a first rate entry into an ever growing genre.
Rating:
Summary: Another Trip to the Sunshine State
Review: So I'm a sucker for this Florida stuff. It seems every month or so I run into another author taking on the wild and wacky turf of the Sunshine State. The latest find was Michael McClelland's Oyster Blues. This is a tale of near murders, dirty politics, not so bright mobsters and of course a couple of clueless lovesick bookworms who stumble onto a conspiracy. Nothing groundbreaking here, but a lot of wacky, off the wall charm. McClelland creates some fun and memorable, though utterly unbelievable, characters and puts them in a clever and enjoyable plot to make a fun read. My only qualm is I think at points McClelland may have tried too hard to insert some wackiness in his book. At one point Jane, the female lead, comes off as way to naive when answering some basic medical questions for a girl as well read as herself, yet later in the book figures out the entire conspiracy based on an obscure reference to a specific fish.
The inevitable comparisons will come so, no this book is not up to par with Hiaasen at his best, or even Tim Dorsey, but the potential is absolutely there. For a first time novelist, this was a first rate entry into an ever growing genre.
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