Jim Feast helped found the action-oriented literary group the Unbearables, known for such events as a protest against the commodification of the Beats at NYU’s Kerouac Conference; annual readings with poets spread out across the Brooklyn Bridge; and a blindfold tour of the Whitney Museum. In the early 1980s, he met and married Nhi Chung, author of Among the Boat People. She introduced him to Chinatown movie theaters, which played the path-breaking Hong Kong noir detective films of those days, giving him a new way to look at the murder mystery. Feast has worked for Fairchild Publications and later taught at Kingsborough Community College. He edited seven books by Ralph Nader, including his three novels, and worked with Barney Rosset on his autobiography. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Karl Marx Private Eye
SKU: 9781629639932
Author: Jim Feast
Series: PM Press
ISBN: 9781629639932
Published: 02/21/23
Format: Paperback
Size: 5×8
Pages: 192
Subjects: Fiction / Mystery & Detective, Historical, Noir, Political
Praise
“’Every murder is a parable,’ quips Jim Feast’s Eleanor Marx. Indeed. Feast’s hyperreal historical collage manages to feel equal parts Columbo and Perec, and to graft Nicholas Meyer’s The Seven-Per-Cent Solution into Max Ernst’s Une Semaine de Bonté. I’m already greedy for another of these ripping father-daughter whodunits.”
—Jonathan Lethem, author of The Arrest and The Feral Detective
“In Karl Marx Private Eye, Jim Feast not only engages us intellectually, but as the readers unravel the mysteries, there’s a good laugh every few pages and gorgeous descriptions of the hotel, the clothing, and the food of the time. It’s a very witty, fast-moving story with a terrific ending. If you like detective fiction, you’ll love this book.”
—Barbara Henning, author of Just Like That and Digigram
“Feast writes with a poet’s pen, a humorist’s wit, and a Dashiell Hammett knack for detective fiction. When a series of dastardly crimes are committed amidst Bohemia’s health spas for the rich, you don’t need a Hercule Poirot when you have the improbable team of Karl Marx and a teenage Sherlock Holmes on the case. Luscious writing that evokes the politics and culture of the era.”
—Peter Werbe, author of Summer on Fire: A Detroit Novel and member of the Fifth Estate magazine editorial collective
Book Events
march, 2025
No Events
Reviews
- Can Karl Marx & Sherlock Holmes Solve the Dastardly Deeds Done at a Rich Spa?
- The Have-Not Mystery: An Interview with Jim Feast
- The Mysterious Afterlife of Revolutionary Events: Jim Feast’s Karl Marx, Private Eye
- Imagining Karl Marx as a Private Eye
- Celebrating Jewish Literature: Two mysteries and a thriller
Praise for Neo Phobe:
“The narrative, handled by a rotation of characters vivid and varied enough to fill several books, propels a mile-high pile of facts, clues and digressions, occasionally overflowing and washing out a sacred cow or two, with the relentless pace of Gaddis’ JR. Perhaps a closer parallel would be the protagonists of James M. Cain whose solid groundings in their professions so inform their actions; but the workers in Neo Phobe are all temps, the sharecroppers of the nineties, and it takes a whole sick crew of them to tackle the project they embark on, solving a series of crimes while cashing in on them by writing a quickie best-seller.” —Kevin Riordan, Evergreen Review
“Neo Phobe aims directly at the paradox that lies a the center of all sexual liberatory writing. Often it suggest brilliant resolutions of this paradox; sometimes it falls victim t it. Everyone should read this book.” —Samuel Delany, author of Dhalgren and Times Square Red, Times Square Blue
“This is one of the strangest books I’ve seen. —Barney Rosset, former publisher of Grove Press
“Neo Phobe is a playful mystery novel that smartly comments on what it means to be a working-class writer (and detective) battling nowhere temp jobs, indifferent journals and Christian zealots.” —Brandon Stussy, editor of Up is Up, but So Is Down: New York’s Downtown Scene, 1974-1992
Interviews
Mentions
Blog
- The Have-Not Mystery: An Interview with Jim Feast
- A Double-Tongued Troubadour: An Interview with Jeffrey Cyphers Wright
- Jim Feast interviews Jerome Sala in Rain Taxi
- Jim Feast reads from (a strange awakening of light that takes the place of dawn)
- Jim Feast’s review of Moorcock’s Byzantium Endures
- Watching the Clock
- Praise for Jim Feast’s Time Extends Life to Those Who Survive
- Praise for Jim Feast’s Long Day, Counting Tomorrow:
- Praise for Jim Feast’s A Strange Awakening of Light that Takes the Place of Dawn