This book is billed as a literary mystery.

For me, literary it is not - ”refreshingly profane” it says. Profane yes, but not artistically or skillfully used. I think Friedman spent too much time in a baseball dugout to be able to differentiate the continuous use of profanity and literature.

For me, mystery it is not - as with any mystery, the book starts with a death, and an investigator is enlisted to uncover clues to the point where the murderer is revealed. Oh, how I long for Agatha Christie or Arthur Conan Doyle.

In Corrupted Humor, Albert Snaedeker dies on the operating table during routine surgery. A cousin who publishes a magazine called the Angle assigns a reporter, Owen Berk, to investigate.

Of course, Berk pursues the leads in the mystery case, but in the course of his work, he crafts a novel about the people associated with the case. The one and only interesting thing about this book is its structure - each section is a chapter of Berk’s book followed by a snippet of the story of Berk’s pursuit of the murderer. Eventually, the two converge. This is a creative, interesting, and enjoyable structure.

And that is where it ends. While I enjoyed the creative structure, when I got about halfway through the book, I began to wonder when it would end. I think the book (295 print pages) is twice as long as it need be, as the seemingly endless cycle of profanity and sex is not delicately used in a literary manner. What is the average length of a Christie or Doyle mystery? I haven’t checked my library, but the 60 official and 6 unofficial Homes stories total only 877 pages. A well-crafted mystery could be written in 150 pages (about half of Corrupted Humours).

The problem with the conclusion is that Friedman robs the reader from seeing it for him or herself. Instead, as we reach the conclusion, he just gives it away and tells us how the two storylines resolve. I will never forget my disappointment at reaching this point in the book.

I don’t know who wrote the Amazon blurb, but Corrupted Humours was neither witty nor sophisticated. The profanity and sex were overdone and not literary. The book is about twice as long as it should be if it is really going to be a competitive mystery. Readable yes, compulsively, no. This was not a book that I would stay up late to read. I keep wondering - did Friedman write this for himself or for the reader? We are always told to write what you know, and if this is what Friedman knows, I know enough.

Anyone who completes a project should get some credit for having done so. I found little else redeeming in Corrupted Humours; Friedman valiantly earned his one star.

I would like to thank the author, Bottom Turtle Press, and NetGalley for the advance review copy. I have voluntarily left this review.

Corrupted says it all.

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to review this book in exchange for an honest review. I made it a little more than half way through and finally had to bail due to the recurring misogynistic scenes. Up to that point I enjoyed the witty repartee and didn't mind looking up the obscure vocabulary peppered throughout the content or following the frequent diversions into minutia which were often superfluous to the story. However, I never cared much to know who dun it and decided to move on before yet another scene depicting female degradation.

When Dr. Snaedeker dies unexpectedly on the operating table - a routine polyp removal ending in a literal explosion of his intestines - his sister Betty is convinced something nefarious occurred despite the various investigations into the incident that were performed and deemed the incident an accident or Dr. Snaedeker’s own fault. She seeks help from her cousin Skip who employs Owen Berk, a writer and former private investigator, to look into the matter.

Berk begins his investigation into the odd and ultimately deathly event. Dr. Snaedeker suffered from a disease in which his body could not process starches properly and made his body produce an abnormally large amount of gasses and flatulence. The hospital and other investigators have concluded this disorder coupled with the doctor’s own negligence in the pre procedure process caused his unfortunate demise.

Researching the death acts as a sort of muse for Berk and as we learn of his findings during the investigation, we are also presented with his novel which is based off the people in Dr. Snaedeker’s life.

This was an incredibly unique and hyper sexualized novel with varying, intertwined storylines. We follow Berk’s love life and infatuation with a woman nearly a third of his 60+ years, the bizarre death of the doctor, the doctor’s unorthodox and illegal practice methods, and Berk’s novel about the Chatelaine. I most enjoyed the story about the Chatelaine and her exploration into her own sexuality.

Admittedly, the story was a bit confusing and I actually didn’t realize the Chatelaine’s story was Berk’s novel until a ways into the book. The overlap between the “real” and fictional characters was very blurred but I think that added a really nice literary element to the book.

If you can stick with it and can handle the bizarre (and honestly gross) medical disorder and discussions, I think this one is worth it and I am happy to have read it. It’s unlike any other novel I have read before.

Thank you to NetGalley, BookishFirst, and the publisher for a copy of this novel.

I realized pretty quickly that this book was not going to be for me but I stuck it out in hopes it would get better. The premise seemed interesting, but the whole thing was bizarre and a struggle to get through. The writing was convoluted and pretentious and none of the characters were like able. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I like to read from the villain’s perspective but this pushed that envelope. The story seemed like a cross between a hipster’s dream of what old age should be and a child’s fascination with flatulence. A doctor is killed by explosion during a routine surgery and his sister hires Mr. Beck to investigate. This causes him to dig and be inspired to write an unrealistic BSDM novel based on the lives of the people involved. I suppose every book is for somebody, but I can’t recommend this one.

The description of this book sounded so intriguing and fun. The book itself, though, was tedious and confusing. I finished, because I don't feel I can write a review without reading the entire book. But it was a slog. Neither the main story nor the story-within-the-story were compelling or even, at times, comprehensible.. I thank NetGalley for a free copy in return for an honest review.

Corrupted Humours begins with a very interesting premise: Dr. Snaedeker, a physician, explodes during a routine operation on his GI tract. The deceased’s cousin asks a reporter and novelist, Owen Berk, to investigate the bizarre death.

Without Corrupted Humors, I would not know it was medically possible to be so full of hot air (read: farts) you could literally blow up. Many a good mystery kicks off by teaching the reader something wild, weird, or wonderful about the human body. This is not that book.

Instead, after Dr. Snaedeker's flatulence injures an entire OR, we are forced to spend time with Owen – a character full of his own sour humor and a penchant for bloviating verbally and in print.

Owen is a writer, as he reminds us at nearly every turn. He's also, apparently, an amateur sleuth who will take on the case of exploding physicians and simultaneously write a fictional novel about the wife of said physician. The book-within-a-book sets Owen up to peer into what this wife, dubbed The Chatelaine, thinks and feels. The narratives then flips back and forth between the book and what is presumably reality.

The problem with Owen, in both his real world accounts, and his fictional take on The Chatelaine, is he comprehends woman as the functional equivalent of a skirted symbol on a ladies' room door. The women in this story operate solely to remind the men they are sexual objects to be ordered around, used, and even sexually assaulted at will.

Owen is also a 70-year-old man having sex with a college student he picked up in a park. The suspension of disbelief required to make this man a hot commodity for twenty-somethings is enormous.

For example, Owen describes women in ways like "her pubis warmly spotlighted by a square shaft of sunlight" and "white-capped breasts swayed freely from her chest, like softballs in a stretched sock of skin." I'm unsure if this woman had somehow mastered having pure white areolas, or she had an accident during plastic surgery that really messed up her anatomy. By the time I reached the description of a woman sexily "soaping her pelvis" I physically cringed.

Outside of Owen's incredibly awkward sexual fantasy life, which is 50% of the book, Corrupted Humours is very difficult to read. He references the great Paul Auster more than once, but Auster he decidedly is not. Reading this is like being trapped in conversation with someone who has recently used recreational stimulants and wants to relate every single factoid they've ever learned. The near constant non-sequiturs, and frenetic-style, was distracting and so obtuse I often skipped over them.

Part of what may make this so difficult to digest is the poor formatting on the ebook edition. Without quotation marks, it was nearly impossible to distinguish internal dialogue from spoken word. Whole sentences appear to be missing their ends. I would hope the publication version improves the overall experience.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing a copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This book opened up very well written and I was beginning to enjoy the story when suddenly the story line changed. It was at this point that I became seriously confused and thought that something had happened to the copy downloaded to my kindle. After fighting through the confusion I found myself back in the original story line and was again beginning to enjoy the story when again there was a change and again I became confused. I decided that it might be worth while to look at reviews of other readers and realized that there is a story within the story. Armed with that knowledge I went back and began to read again hoping that I would be able to get into the book as a whole. Unfortunately I have decided to not finish this one. I really like the main story but the changes between the stories (I can't tell if there are two or three) has left me lost and unable to enjoy what I am sure others will find to be a great book.

I could not finish this book. Choppy narration, a story that from the start does not make any sense, and some (in my opinion) rather sexist descriptions just made this nonreadable for me. I barely made it 10% in and cannot bring myself to continue.

Description

A literary mystery – antic and amusing, refreshingly profane, elaborately staged, compulsively  readable

Corrupted Humours opens with the explosion of Albert Snaedeker on the operating table during  routine surgery. The deceased’s cousin, an oil heir and publisher of Angle magazine, assigns his reporter and sometime novelist, Owen Berk, to investigate.  

Berk not only pursues the whodunnit,/howdunnit questions but, intrigued by the bizarre death and the people surrounding it, transforms them into characters in a novel. In the story, Snaedeker's surgeon's depressed wife is indoctrinated into the world of S/M and has an imagined flowering. Berk's novel is woven into the framing narrative until the plots converge as Berk falls in love with the woman, wondering how much of his passion is for her, how much for the fantasy figure he has turned her into.

Firstly I want to thank netgalley for the eARC of Corrupted Humors it was a wonderful read. My thoughts are my own.

This is very hard to categorize or even describe. Different tangents.

Those who appreciate more subtle/darker humor, insight into human behavior (even that which we don’t care to examine in ourselves), and intelligent writing should enjoy this. It is unique and well-crafted.

Corrupted Humours is an intriguing combination of romance, mystery, and late-life midlife crisis. Reporter and novelist Berk is assigned to investigate a bizarre death on the operating table. Albert Snaedeker exploded in mid-operation for a polyp. The explanation was that he failed to fully clear his system so he still had a lot of gas in his system, gas that ignited under the heat of the cauterizing surgical tool. Yikes!

Beck begins the investigation, aided and prodded by his young lover, a college student whose love he cannot believe will last. He might be right, he’s in his sixties. He is also writing the story of The Chatelaine who we quickly realize is the wife of the surgeon in the Snaedeker explosion.

We also learn that more than one person may have had a motive to kill Snaedeker, but how could it have been done?

I liked Corrupted Humours though I am not sure that I like that I liked it. The people are all so awful, even Beck. He is kind, he is generous, he loses love because he isn’t into degrading women. I will confess I think his affair with the college student is gross and while it is not an abuse of power or coercive in any way, it still is gross. His boss is gross, Theresa is gross, the surgeon is gross, Snaedeker is gross, the imagined story of the chatelaine (if it is imagined) is gross, and yet it all comes together into a compelling narrative and an intriguing and interesting story.

Corrupted Humours will be released on August 29th. I received an e-galley from the publisher through NetGalley.

Corrupted Humours at Bottom Turtle Press

Donald Friedman author site

Ummmm...I don't know what I read in this book. Unfortunately, it was all over the place. I was so confused and did not know or understand what was going on for the majority of this book. The formatting for the kindle version was absolutely atrocious as well. There was no punctuation and some of the sentences would stop midway and not have an ending.

To quote one of the secondary characters, "feh."
I received an unedited copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
I clearly was not in the target audience for this one, which is funny, because based on the blurb it looked perfect. I'm a mystery aficionado with a sophomoric sense of humor and a love of scatalogical jokes. A story about a guy investigating the death of a fella during a routine anal polyp removal? Due to a buildup of flatus which caused an explosion upon ignition by the cauterizing tool? Bloody brilliant! This should have been a winner. But.
Ok, so, yes, I did get a couple of chuckles out of it, but I actually found the whole thing repellant.
Imagine if 50 Shades of Gray had been written by a dirty old man who thinks he's the smartest guy in the room.
Yeah. That was about the size of it. This wasn't a mystery, it was a weird, achingly pretentious erotic comedy. I know there is an audience for this, but I'm not it.
Also, the lack of quotation marks was awful. I had no idea that it would make such a difference, but it did. I'm guessing that the formatting will be different in the edited version, though.

This is an unusual(!) book and it helped for me to read background and other reader/reviewer feedback to get some context prior to diving in. It's very cerebral (I learned new words and medical 'stuff') and found the author's style very 'literary' - perhaps like Richard Russo? It was a book within a book - the main character (Owen Berk) works for a literary magazine and his boss asks him investigate the death of a prominent psychiatrist (related to the boss) who exploded on the table during a routine medical procedure. Owen decides to write a novel about the situation (hence book within a book) and the story alternates between the two. It covers a lot of ground - spirituality, mystery, medicine, humor, life's purpose, art, writing, dreams, skiing, etc. (what a range of topics!). It's going to appeal to a special type of reader. Thanks to #NetGalley for an advanced copy.

DNF. I hate giving bad reviews, but I don't know what I was thinking when I downloaded this book. I read for about half an hour before I decided to cut my losses and squander my precious time elsewhere. I enjoyed neither the plot nor the writing style. Thank you NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest opinion. I'm sorry Mr. Friedman and Bottle Turtle Press / BookBaby that I did not find this book more enjoyable.

3.75 stars / This review will be posted at BookwormishMe.com on 25 August 2020.


Owen Berk is called upon to investigate the untimely death of his boss’s cousin, one psychologist named Albert Snaedeker. Albert was in for a routine colonoscopy/polypectomy when he met his end by exploding on the operating table. The hospital maintains that Albert simply neglected to properly prepare for the procedure, but Albert’s family isn’t so sure.

Berk sets off on a path of questions that lead him to find questionable behaviors and some soul searching of his own. Along the way, he decides that he’s going to turn this investigation into a novel. Corrupted Humours is a book within a book - Berk’s path through his own life and relationships while he tries to find an answer for Snaedeker’s death, and the fictionalized accounting of his death which he writes.

Be prepared, this isn’t your average novel. Berk is a 70-something who still runs daily, writes for a literary magazine, and does a tad bit of investigation on the side. There is definitely some sex, drugs and a little bit of romance. Berk isn’t quite sure what to make of his own life, let alone the ones he’s exploring. If Berk weren’t in his 70s, I would almost call this a “coming of age” novel.

I wanted to love this, based on the crazy concept of a human exploding in an OR, but I didn’t love it. I enjoyed it. I liked it. I got a little lost with the book within a book because the two stories overlap quite a bit. If you can keep track of the separate but similar storylines, you’ll be okay.

4 stars This is very hard to categorize or even describe. Different tangents...interesting, yet appearOMG to wander...marital/romantic, sexuality, medical, psychological...all coalesce for a satisfying ending. Definitely won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. Those who appreciate more subtle/darker humor, insight into human behavior (even that which we don’t care to examine in ourselves), and intelligent writing should enjoy this. It is unique and well-crafted.

I really wanted to like this book, but it sounded like the ramblings in the medical staff changing lounge. It has an audience, just not me. Sorry.
I requested and received a free ebook copy from Bottom Turtle Press via NetGalley

I'm...not sure where to start with this book. The premise sounded fantastic - an aging author investigating the death of a prominent psychiatrist who exploded on the table during a routine medical procedure. Unfortunately, for me, at least, this book did not deliver on the humor and entertainment I was hoping for. There was a lot of philosophy, existentialism, and nonessential sex scenes (including some sub/dom scenes), and it just didn't feel accessible to me. Just not what I was expecting/looking for, unfortunately.

I'll be brief. I did not enjoy this one much. This kind of story is very difficult to pull off, and it just didn't work. I compliment the author for giving it shot.

I appreciate the ARC for review!

Books with mystery and humour are a deadly combination. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read this book. I like mystery books with humour but this was just not my cup of tea. This could have been improved with better placement.