The Fat Man
The Fat Man: A Tale of North Pole Noir Ken Harmon, 2010 What a shame. Harmon took a great premise and absolutely ruined it with shitty, shitty execution. Premise: Gumdrop Coal is a sorry excuse for a noir hero, in a poorly constructed holiday world. Someone is framing him, or muscling him out, or trying to destroy Santa, or trying to ruin Christmas, or something. It isn't exactly coherent. I loved this idea. Christmas elf noir? That could be great! The dark side of the holiday, maybe the dirty secrets of the elven sweatshops or some artifact is stolen and you don't know who to trust. A murder investigation, at least, right? Nothing that cool is in this book. The story is boring. The characters are shallow, hollow, despicable things. The author doesn't come up with almost anything interesting; he's too busy stuffing the book with more horribly grating references to holiday crap. What horrified me the most was the tone. It alternates wildly b...