MRC RECOMMENDS: Get Gribnitz by Howard Gimple
“…a deliciously entertaining, fun, and exciting read from cover to cover.”
– The Mystery Review Crew
Get Gribnitz
By Howard Gimple
Genre: Thriller, Satire
Howard Gimple, master of the comedy thriller, takes on the world of advertising in his funniest, snarkiest, most entertainingly irreverent book yet.
Stew Gribnitz is a brilliant advertising copywriter with impulse control issues, an utter disdain for authority, and an unresolved demi-Oedipal complex (he’d like to murder his father but has no sexual designs on his mother). When the first act of his new creative director is to dump our hero’s best work into a garbage bin, Stew’s immediate impulse (which, of course, he can’t control) is to do unspeakable things to his new boss’s necktie while he’s still wearing it.
The next day, when the necktie guy is found brutally murdered, Stew is brought in for questioning by the NYPD. He’s released thanks to an air-tight alibi, but not before his face is emblazoned on the cover of the New York tabloids, declaring him to be a cross between Son of Sam and Jack the Ripper. Stew becomes a Madison Avenue untouchable and a New York City pariah, except to his father who declares that seeing his son on the front page of his favorite paper is the first time that Stew has ever done anything to make him proud.
Stew gets a gig as a part-time advertising consultant to a billionaire publisher running for Governor of Connecticut who’s twenty points behind in the polls. When the publisher’s private plane does a nosedive into Long Island Sound, Stew is the only one who knows that his deceased client had been receiving death threats from his opponent, a former FBI agent whose brother is a mob enforcer.
Stew is convinced he’ll be the next victim and the authorities are convinced he’s a multiple murderer. The only way to clear his name is to find the real killer or killers, a task, well beyond his skill set, made even more difficult because the FBI, the NYPD, several suburban police jurisdictions and a homicidal hitwoman are all out to GET GRIBNITZ.
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Review of Get Gribnitz by Howard Gimple
Get Gribnitz is a deliciously entertaining, fun, and exciting read from cover to cover. The exceptional storyline—combined with the attitude and sharp mouth of the main character—will keep readers turning pages into the wee hours.
The story follows the plight of Stewart “Stew” Gribnitz, an advertising copywriter who’s trying to get ahead in one of the many advertising firms famously lining New York’s Madison Avenue. Unfortunately, Stew’s personality frequently opens his mouth and says things before fully putting his brain in gear. In a field where appearance and impression are everything, this personality flaw does not usually help Stew achieve his objectives.
At the very beginning of the story, Stew and the other members of the creative team are squeezed together in a small conference room to meet the new executive creative director—their new boss—James G. Persons. Stew and Persons quickly go head-to-head about a decision Persons made, and the meeting ends with Stew throwing something in Persons’ face. The following day, Persons is murdered, and all eyes fall on Stew as the murderer.
After getting fired from his job, Stew is offered an opportunity to use his advertising savvy to help a wealthy New Yorker run for governor. Stew accepts, but over the coming weeks, events unfold that put Gribnitz in a precarious position. He ends up having to hide from the cops, yet still investigate why all these things are happening to him; who has it in for him?
With the mention of Yom Kippur, a synagogue, a bar mitzvah, and a rabbi all within the very first paragraph of the story, the author not-so-subtly prepares the reader for at least one of the characters being Jewish. It happens to be the main character (as well as a few others). Jewish characters come with a plethora of words, phrases, and customs that non-Jewish people may find odd. Stew would not be the Gribnitz he is if he wasn’t Jewish. For example, when explaining something about his father, Stew says, “…he’s kvelling like I just won the Nobel Prize.” The Yiddish works well in the story.
The entire story is told by Stew in the first-person narrative. In doing so, he certainly doesn’t hold back from the reader how he sees things. If the reader wasn’t privy to Stew’s thoughts, much of the hilarity would be lost. In describing the appearance of his father’s friend to the reader, for example, Stew explains: “He looks like a Yiddish grim reaper in a brown polyester suit a couple of sizes too big.”
Stew doesn’t just reserve his sarcasm for others; he often directs it toward himself: “I’m outta work, got no place to live, and the whole city thinks I’m a mad-dog killer. Not to mention, I haven’t gotten laid in a year and a half. If I get any luckier, I’ll slip on a banana peel and get crushed by a garbage truck.” Further, whenever Stew mentions his ex-wife, he always refers to her as the Orthodox Jewish Vampire Bride from Hell.
The author may push the acceptable limits of humor in a mystery, but that’s the main thing that makes this such a fun story to read. There are some bits in here that are genuinely laugh-out-loud funny, but they all work well in this author’s style. We think the author demonstrates a wonderful balance of story elements, including a quite original storyline.
We completely enjoyed reading Get Gribnitz and finished the story wanting more. We suspect other readers will feel exactly the same.
About Howard Gimple
Howard Gimple has been a penslinger for most of his adult life. He was a writer at Newsday, the editor of a newsletter for the New York Giants football team, and a copywriter and creative director for several New York ad agencies. He has written English dialogue for the American releases of Japanese anime cartoons and reviewed books for the Long Island History Journal and movies for a pay-per-view television network.
Howard was Chief Creative Officer at TajMania Entertainment, a film and TV production company dedicated to creating socially conscious programming. He wrote ’The Garbageman,’ an award-winning documentary about a waste management executive who helped save the lives of more than 50,000 children with congenital heart disease.
Howard was a writer and sports editor for the Stony Brook University alumni magazine. He also taught two seminars at the university, ‘Rock & Relevance,’ about the political influence of 60’s rock & roll and ‘Filthy Shakespeare,’ exploring the dramatic use of sexual puns and innuendos in the Bard’s plays and poems.
Obviously unable to hold a job for any length of time, Howard turned to writing novels, where his chances of getting fired are minimal.
Howard grew up in Brooklyn, which became cool shortly after he departed. He now lives in Glendora, California with his wife, Chris, and his goldendoodle, Brinkley.
Visit him at: https://howardgimple.com/
