The Last Speaker of Skalwegian

 

DAVID GARDNER

Stats for my copy: Trade paperback, Encircle Publications, 2021.

How acquired: From the author via Cozy Mystery Review Crew.

First line: Lenny Thorsen watched the red pickup roar into the parking lot, a statue propped up in back.

(Goodreads synopsis below.)

My thoughts: I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this book, but the synopsis intrigued me. What I got was an amusing and somewhat quirky story filled with outrageous characters and situations that still came across as believable. I never knew from chapter to chapter what to expect. Well, that’s not quite true. The further I read, the more I did expect twists and turns and the unexpected.

To give you an example, Lenny, our protagonist, lives in an abandoned top floor revolving restaurant, that has a mind of it’s own. Meaning periodically, with just a few warning clicks, the restaurant would begin revolving, often sending items, such as Lenny’s breakfast, flying, while he grabbed onto something to keep himself from flying. Which I thought just sounded like an utterly fascinating and fun way to live! Lenny is a linguistics professor, who is often distracted by words and their origins. For instance:

‘Disperse’ came from the Latin disperses, which was was the past participle of dispergere (‘to scatter’). Lenny wanted everyone in the world to disperse.

Being a reader who often pauses to look up a word I’m unfamiliar with, I began to look forward to those musings.

All in all I enjoyed my time with Lenny and his group of wacky friends and colleagues.

*I received a free copy of this book from the author and have voluntarily reviewed it*

Synopsis from Goodreads: Professor Lenny Thorson lives in a defunct revolving restaurant, obsesses over word derivations, and teaches linguistics at a fourth-rate college with a gerbil for a mascot. Lenny's thirty-four years have not been easy—he grew up in a junkyard with his widowed father and lives under a cloud of guilt for having killed another boxer as a teenager.

Desperate to save his teaching career, Lenny seizes the opportunity to document the Skalwegian language with its last living speaker, Charlie Fox. Life appears to have finally taken a turn for the better...

Unfortunately for Lenny, it hasn't. He soon finds himself at war with Charlie, his dean, a ruthless mobster, and his own conscience.