Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff

Actor Penn creates quite an iconoclast in his wacky first novel, an expanded revision of an audiobook he narrated and wrote under the pseudonym of Pappy Pariah in 2016. Bob Honey has been in the waste business for years and ends up as a hit man wasting humans. The divorced, middle-aged, California burb-based loner exhibits bizarre behavior (wrapping wire around his house, mowing his long-neglected lawn at three in the morning) that has garnered police blotter citations over the years. With a successful septic-tank pumping business, Honey goes international, ending up in Baghdad, where he is kidnapped and recruited by an underworld king called “Loodstar” for a ludicrous plan to knock off American senior citizens, under the guise of improving the environment. Bob foments chaos wherever he goes, his convoluted, alliterative commentary flying by (“the maintenance of femininity cannot be measured by masquerade, masculinization, or marvels man-made”) as Honey summarily knocks off seniors with his trusty mallet and takes potshots at his ex-wife, the film industry, U.S. corporate skullduggery in the Mideast, and American society in general—not to mention his final diatribe against the current president. Penn pushes the envelope of absurdity, but many readers won’t be able to get past the self-indulgent prose. (Mar.)