Book Review: One Less Elvis (and Other Stories)

One Less Elvis (& Other Stories). Kent McDaniel. Amazon Digital Services, Inc., December 20, 2013, Kindle E-Book, 64 pages.

Reviewed by David Laipple.

Chicago author Kent McDaniel shows us how to have fun with short stories, starting with a novelette, who-done-it murder mystery. The title story, One Less Elvis, is a story about Elvis impersonators prodding a reluctant police detective to find the murderer of one of their own. Kent McDaniel’s hero sleuth—retired school teacher, “white-haired geezer,” and Elvis impersonator, Brendan Culhane—weaves through the evidence and the private lives of a baker’s dozen of suspects, solving the mystery of who killed Larry “Hound Dog” Vasquez and letting the reader wonder if Elvis still drives a pick-up truck.

The first of Kent’s four other stories, Or Someplace Shining, relates how the not-very Reverend McDermott creatively resolves an adolescent’s issue…