The Wedding Column Murders by Jeffrey Metzger

   There are mainly two kinds of people who think living in NYC is a good idea – the moneyed elite and the idealistic lunatics. This is the story about the former, specifically about someone who begins to kill off the privileged wealthy scions of well-known and well-connected families. Their names are seemingly chosen from the society pages of a local newspaper at random. Or are they?
     The police do their best to investigate and they recruit the protagonist of the novel – one of those loaded scions – to help them navigate the world where people swim in money Donald Duck style.
      This book takes a minute to get into, it’s tone at first is very much British upper-class dramatics set in the modern America, but then you get used to it because all that obnoxious pretentiousness is, of course, satire. And that’s just some of it. The political satire elements are very present too. This book doesn’t just spoof its characters, it goes after the world they so luxuriously reside in too.
      While I enjoy a good satire, I must admit this one is somewhat heavy-handed. But then again, it takes it upon itself to spoof a period of time that is practically ready-made for spoofing. The recent American past is pretty much a tragicomedy of theatrical proportions, a satire onto itself, the low hanging fruit of subjects.
       The writing itself is quite good. The overblown pretentiousness of the tediously useless denizens of this novel is done with wry panache. It’s a smug novel, though. It sort of tells you how clever it is instead of merely showing you, right down to the gimmick of a trick ending. The protagonist is as glibly smug as the novel itself, and for a good reason, he is, after all, a perfect product of his environment.
        Overall, it’s pretty fun, though, and a quick read. I wouldn’t mind checking out what the author does next, provided it’s away from the politics; the man seems to have a knock for dark comedy in bright places. Pretty good find for a random kindle freebie.