In George Brown's quirky mystery, the death of California poet Ickey Jerusalem sets off a chain of events that entangle Dedalus "Ded" Smith, a Buffalo insurance investigator tired of his humdrum life. As Ded delves into the bizarre circumstances surrounding Ickey's demise, he uncovers a cast of eccentric suspects aboard the ill-fated flight, including Ickey's lawyer, his personal assistant Beulah, and a plastic surgeon. The investigation takes surreal turns as interviewees transform into animals and philosophical musings intertwine with Ded's probing.

While grappling with the complexities of Ickey's poetry and existential themes, Ded navigates romantic entanglements and personal demons, all while unraveling the mystery behind Ickey's death. Brown's narrative blends suspense and humor, with Ded's idiosyncratic sleuthing leading readers on a whimsical journey through San Francisco history and the intricacies of human connection. Although the novel's pace occasionally falters, Ded's magnetic personality and the novel's inventive storytelling make for an entertaining and thought-provoking read. "A zany, inventive, and multilayered fever dream of murder and mayhem," Brown's novel offers a refreshing blend of art, philosophy, and suspense for readers seeking a cerebral mystery experience.

This was actually a pretty interesting book but it took me a long time to get through it. I'd had a lot of people recommend it to me so I gave it a shot.

A confusing but fun mystery for the literary or faux highbrow audience. This book will definitely make you feel like you learned something, but that doesn't mean you'll necessarily be able to say you understood all of it.

I listened to the audiobook of this story and found it somewhat difficult to follow. I don't know much about William Blake and I think a little knowledge about him would've been helpful. I felt like I skimmed the surface of the novel, but never really understood what was going on. Maybe a physical copy would've been a different experience.

This was a quirky and unique read. it may not appeal to everyone, but i enjoyed it.
Many thanks to Galbraith Literary Publishers and to Netgalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

This was the most fun I have had with a mystery book ever! The book is loosely based on William Blake's poetry, characters and ideas... fortunately you do not have to be familiar with any of Blake's work to love this book. If anything it opens the world of poetry in an accessible manner so that maybe more people will learn to love epic poetry and romantic era classics. The book centers on the mysterious death of San Francisco Poet Ickey Jerusalem and his wild and crazy group of cohorts. An insurance adjuster, Ded Smith who is known as Dr. Death for his uncanny ability to determine cause of death and solve murders, is on board the flight when Jerusalem is found dead. He is initially asked to help the police with interviewing the suspects as a friendly courtesy, but when it is discovered that Ickey took out a life insurance policy a month before his death, Ded is called in to rule if the case a suicide or murder in an official capacity. While he investigates each of the suspects and the crime itself, he finds himself caught up in a web of philosophy, intrigue and murder. The poet not only collected delightfully weird friends the stand out on the page; he had seemed to develop strange ideas on life and existence in general. I can honestly say the author had me guessing until the end who the killer was, while at the same time weaving so much philosophical information and poetry that I found my self in awe of how he tied all of it together. This is a truly magical and unique book that will take readers on an epic journey.

I think the concept of the book seems interesting enough but WOW did I hate this. The book is long unnecessarily, and I don't think an Umberto Eco style mystery benefitted at all from the bizarre surrealist edge. The characters are weird, which may be a draw for some, but didn't work for me. I wanted to get into this but I just don't think it works for my tastes. Finished it because I got the ARC in exchange for an honest review, but I would have DNF'd this EXTREMELY early on if not for that.

I know nothing about William Blake and even still I loved this book. I guess if you were familiar with Blake there would be another level of understanding and experience.

Holy Moly--the characters in this story! Such an odd assortment--I would love to see how Mr. Brown's mind works to come up with this bunch! At the top of the list is Ded Smith. I'm not going to say much about what he does because that would be giving too much away. Suffice it to say, he's astute, wise, greatly influenced by philosophy with particular interest in Plato. All this leads him to astonishing conclusions.

And there are so many twists and turns that Brown had me guessing the entire way through. When I thought I had it figured out, there was a sharp twist in another direction. This is one of those books that you have to stay with to the very end because you want to know what happens!

This was my first George Brown book. I'm looking forward to more.

This book has a very long and mostly correct title. I need to get that out of the way, because it really is in he way. I haven't read any William Blake, so I can't tell if those characters are these characters. The names are beyond real. I mean, the main victim is called Ickey. That's a shortening of Icarus, but still. The detective is named Ded Smith. I can't go through the other character's names or we'd be here all week.
This is a murder mystery. Someone killed Ickey and made it look sort of look suicide. The possible killers are a very small group because the death happened on a plane.
Ah, the drug soaked 60's and 70's in San Francisco. I was there then. Parts of the city looked normal and possibly were. But there was an undercurrent of strangeness all around. Even grocery stores burned incense. This book rakes that strangeness and doubles down on it.
Ded is an insurance claims adjuster. He is mostly involved because his company wrote a $2,000,000 policy, payable to Ickey's girlfriend. There is an out if Ickey did commit suicide. Ded has been called in to prove Ickey killed himself. It was just a coincident that Ded was on the plane where and when Ickey died.
There are lots of things that just sort of happened. Ded goes to a very surrealistic funeral where he meet an even odder group of people than he is already involved with. Ickey's inner circle is beyond strange and a little disagreeable. If I were to give you the 411 on these people, this review would be just as long as the book and that is 560 pages.
Ded, in spite of the strange characters and the psychotropic atmosphere, solves the case. I'm not all that sure how he came to his solution. He pulls one of those drawing room gatherings of all suspects, a la Agatha Christy, and goes through why each suspect could have done the deed and how before excusing them with a "you didn't do it anyway". His final suspect confesses after Ded's version of events is explained.
This book felt to me to be a throwback to many novels written during the 70's on the psychedelic style. It doesn't need close examination. In fact, paying to much attention to the meat of the story will confuse you even more. Just go with the flow and let the words take you where they want to go, and the tale will weave a very calming spell on you. It's a trip.

Unique and quirky, this book was billed as "a rollicking literary murder mystery." Perhaps if I were more familiar with William Blake it might have helped, but I found the humor juvenile, the character names kind of weird, and nothing rollicking at all. While this "locked room mystery" touched on some interesting metaphysical, philosophical, and theological concepts, I really struggled to finish this book. Personally, it wasn't my cup of tea, but some are calling it a cult classic and I'm sure it will find an audience. I appreciate the opportunity to have read an ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Ickey Jerusalem, the self proclaimed poet laureate of San Francisco, has been found dead on an airplane, in a locked bathroom. Was it suicide? Or did one of the many people traveling with Ickey kill him? That is what Ded Smith must figure out as a life insurance claim adjuster, who also happened to be on that very flight. He has a plethora of suspects, including a blind personal assistant, an overweight lawyer with heart issues, a doctor that isn't what he appears, and a chauffeur that drives a hearse to name a few, but things are made more difficult when someone starts shooting at Ded. 

This book hurt my head. It was so absurd at times that I wasn’t sure what was going on. It had an Agatha Christie feel to it, in terms of everyone being a viable suspect as well as the way in which Ded revealed the truth about Ickey’s death, but it wasn’t executed well. There were some funny parts, but even those moments were overly odd. The reveal of the truth, and all its little working parts, was the best part of the novel, but I had to weed through a lot to get there.

Icky Jerusalem is found suffocated in the restroom of a 747! Could this have been a suicide? He seemed to be a little distraught with his decision to cease his life’s work of crafting metaphysical poetry, but would that have caused him to commit suicide?

Being a poet laureate is a daunting responsibility. How does one continue to write prose when the karmic juices are not flowing? Ah, but there are certainly distractions in life that can fill the creative voids. One is the lovely Beulah who had been a professional female wrestler prior to developing hysterical blindness.

Ded Smith is an Insurance Adjuster whose primary goal is to ferret out insurance claims that are suspect or fraudulent. A $20 million dollar insurance policy was taken out just prior to Icky’s death, but Icky had a reputed fortune of nearly $350 million.

Twists and turns abound in this frolic of San Francisco lifestyle. So much to deduce within this novel that waxes metaphysical contemplation or argument amid the prose. I am glad the author brings it to a satisfactory conclusion but it could be considered overly long to do so. 3.5 stars – CE Williams

“A zany, inventive, and multilayered fever dream of murder and mayhem."
--KIRKUS REVIEWS

“Graphic and comedic, the novel indulges in reflective, sometimes nonsensical, streams of thought.”
--FOREWORD REVIEWS

The author’s profile on Amazon*, which I read in retrospect, shed light on the writer’s mindset and impetus for the book. Many years back, I myself daydreamed of writing a zany, mysterious novel, and for that reason I am glad for Mr. Brown that he was able to write the book he dreamed of. My book would likely be half its 576-page length, however. His book’s description blurb and pre-publication reviews highlighted its subject matter and style, and so the target audience may appreciate his efforts.

*
https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0BJQN8XMY/about

This is one of the craziest, fascinating, and entertaining book i read in a long time. A book that talks about the investigation about a poet who is writing Blake's poems in the XXI century.
If this is not weird enough the investigatore is even crazier.
I read a lot of mystery, any type of mystery but this was one of a kind.
And I had fun and enjoyed it.
It's a sort of marmite book and the pre-requisite is to have read Blake,
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

A novel evoking the "side-splitting humor of John Kennedy Toole"? Set in the San Francisco of the 70's? Layered with the poetry and art of Willam Blake? Color me intrigued.

What Toole accomplished in A Confederacy of Dunces, one of my all-time favorite novels, was art. Profoundly funny, obscure, ridiculous. Ignatius was a character like no other. In Who Killed Jerusalem, the opening paragraph of the opening chapter has a dead Ickey Jerusalem sitting on the toilet in the first class bathroom, while protagonist Ded, an insurance claims adjuster, is stuck on the same flight with drunk salesmen back in steerage. This had promise, it was over the top and had me invested in Ded. Tragically, the absurdity kept multiplying, with no release valve, nothing relatable, just crazily named characters in increasingly zany situations. Unsurprisingly, Brown is no Toole. He is on his way, however, towards Rocky Flintstone heights [my notes: Is this My Dad Wrote a Porno?]. Each sentence felt forced, like it was designed to elicit that promised side-splitting humor and instead achieved much eye-rolling and head shakes and "oh brothers".

I bounced back and forth between reading and listening to the audiobook. The narrator read the story in a newsman-like fashion, just the facts ma'am, and saved his voice artistry for the myriad of characters. The only reason I could think of for the doctor's annoyingly high pitched nasal wheeze was that he'd run out of vocal expressions.

I have to admit, I struggled with this one. Giving it a final push at 2x speed, stuck on an airplane with nothing else to distract me, with almost 20 hours and 576 pages behind me I was able to reach The End.

Pro-tips for the intrepid: speed up the audiobook, and do look up the Blake imagery. It might have something to do with the story (if you squint) and is disturbingly beautiful.

Thank you to NetGalley, Galbraith Literary Publishers for the ARC and the Audiobook.

Before I begin my review, I feel the need to emphasize that reviews are totally personal. I say that specifically in the case of this book because I really felt like it wasn’t for me, but I felt like under certain conditions it could have been for me, and I definitely think that there are many people who might enjoy it. So while my review won’t be a stellar one, you’ll find many reviews that are… so if you like the genre (fiction/murder mysteries), you may want to do a little research to see if this would be a good fit for you.

Okay so I don’t know anything about Blake or his philosophy or characters he’s written, but it’s indicated that you don’t need to in order to read or enjoy this book. I personally agree with that assessment. In retrospect, I think that being familiar with Blake and his work would probably considerably increase connection to and enjoyment of the book, but it isn’t necessary. Although without it, you, like me, may read this and think, “wow, this might be the weirdest book I’ve ever read.” Note that weird doesn’t necessarily mean bad, and I don’t mean it in a negative sense here. The weirdness of the book isn’t why I didn’t like it. In fact, the weirdness (along with the compulsion I have to absolutely know whodunit) is probably why I stuck it out until the end.

There’s just a lot going on in this book. The characters are confusing. I could occasionally connect if I did serious mental gymnastics, but definitely not enough to feel attached to any. I mean maybe by the end I felt a little attachment to Ded, but that was because we’re with him the entire way through and I kind of felt sorry for him.

The mystery itself has promise. The setting of the crime is cool, and there are a lot of clues and things that had the potential to have a really phenomenal set up. They ended up missing the mark for me, but I appreciated the potential. I think I would have been a lot more invested if maybe 200 pages in the middle had been cut out. The book started to drag for a while, and almost nothing I was getting in the middle ended up being super relevant or necessary to getting into the meat of actually solving the crime.

If Hercule Poirot was investigating the events of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, this would be the book a stoned Agatha Christie would write. Ded Smith is a sad sack insurance claims investigator whose reputation for getting to the truth of things pulls him into the drama of who killed Ickey Jerusalem right from the moment Ickey is found dead in the first-class bathroom in his flight to San Francisco. He gets pulled in deeper when it is found that Ickey recently took out a multimillion-dollar policy with his insurance company. This is a quirky and at times bizarre read which interweaves the poetry, art, and philosophy of William Blake with a locked-room mile-high club murder mystery. The cast of characters in 1977 San Francisco is as colorful as you can possibly imagine. It was a challenging and long read with lots of dialogue that needed some chewing to get through. While humorous at times, I sense the humor is more suited to the male species (do guys really compare randomly encountered objects to the shape of sperm that much???).

Like Poirot, Ded Smith uses his brilliant grey cells to get to the bottom of things without telling the reader exactly where he is going with his thoughts along the way. If you persist, the payout at the end as Ded unravels everyone's secrets and delivers the ultimate reveal. I don't think you need to know much about William Blake to enjoy this story. A quick Wikipedia read of Blake's bio is a nice supplement. Sure, there are probably lots of intricacies a Blake fan will appreciate all the more, but just read and go with the flow.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4 stars because I appreciate the author's artful and quirky cleverness.

Thank you to Galbraith Literary Publishers and #NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.

Who Killed Jerusalem?
By George Albert Brown

This is a very strange book: from the characters' names to the metaphysical theories, the story is at times funny, at times engaging, and at times totally confusing. It is a murder mystery – if the reader can follow the plot line.

The protagonist is an insurance adjuster named Ded (Dedaelus) Smith. His own story is enough to confuse the reader right from the beginning. He is sort of a lost soul trying to find himself, since his divorce from his wife Harriet. Since his divorce, he has spent virtually all of his time flying from job to job and has built up his relationship with policemen while working out whether insurance claims should be paid.

Ded is on a plane to San Francisco, when a dead body is found in one of the plane's toilets. The detective called in happens to be a friend who asks Ded to sit in on the interviews of passengers. Thus the plot begins.

The deceased is one Ickey Jerusalem, the self-described "Poet Laureate" of San Francisco. What is initially believed to be a suicide turns into a murder investigation. Who killed Jerusalem? His lover, blind Beulah Vala; his chauffeur, Adam Ghostflea; Tharmas Luvah, his business manager; Bacon Urizon, his lawyer; Dr.Bromion Ulro, a physician; Robert N. William, the flight purser – or is it someone else?

As you can see by the names, this is NOT your everyday murder mystery. I found this book confusing, sometimes bogged down in nonsensical quasi-religious theories – and yet I found myself hanging in until the very end. The Agatha Christie type ending – where the detective wraps it all up – makes the read worthwhile.

When poet Ickey Jerusalem is discovered dead in an airplane toilet, Ded Smith investigates.

Billed as a “rollicking literary murder mystery” with “side-splitting humor,” WHO KILLED JERUSALEM? was anything but. I found the humor to be entirely distasteful which really put a damper on things and made me not care about the characters or the murder mystery. The book is based on the work of William Blake and states at the beginning that the reader doesn’t need to know about Blake or his work in order to enjoy the book. I’m not familiar with William Blake and can’t help but wonder what impact it would have had if I was. I suspect it does actually make a difference although, overall, I don’t think anything would’ve been enough to offset all the cringey parts that really ruined this book for me. The end felt like a huge info dump to make sense of the bizarre story and reveal the murderer. WHO KILLED JERUSALEM? was ultimately a disappointment for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and Galbraith Literary Publishers for the DRC.

I need to start this review with saying this book did not work for me at all. That doesn’t mean it won’t work for you, I see a wide mix of reviews on here so please look around or even try this one to get your own opinion. I felt like the “A Rollicking Literary Murder Mystery” was misleading. There was a mystery, I was never invested in solving it, but it was there. I didn’t find anything in this story to be funny or “rollicking.” I recognized attempts at humor and thought they would be best appreciated by middle school aged boys. My style of humor is not this books, that could be different for others, but I need more to humor than the bizarre and mentions of sexual things. I also thought the author’s beginning note was misleading. He claims you don’t need to know anything about William Blake, but so much of the book ties to his history (of which I know very little) including the bizarre and silly names. Normally I try to find positives about any book, but this book I couldn’t even fully read, I started to skim about 40% in and then read the final reveals to see if it got better. It did not get better. I didn’t care about the characters, I found the philosophical tie-ins to be juvenile and like the author was trying hard to make a silly book deep.