Review: Drunk Driving Champion

Drunk Driving Champion by Eric Hendrixson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A hundred drunken drivers gather in Washington DC for a cross country race. With a million dollars and a new liver hanging in the balance, who will claim the prize? Will it be Will, the wine enthusiast with a daughter in the hospital? Or two second string racers looking to make names for themselves? Or a couple of Russian suits? Or those darn frat boys looking to save their frat house?

In that far gone year 2010, Eric Hendrixson wrote Bucket of Face as part of the New Bizarro Author Series. When he told me he had a new book ready, I was all revved up and ready to go.

Drunk Driving Champion is a spoof/homage to car movies like Cannonball Run and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. True to the Bizarro genre, it also features cars that can only be started while the driver is drunk, a recently unfrozen 1930's starlet named Dottie and the equally-thawed 1930's super hero, Captain Video. Hey, super heroes were dropping into the North Atlantic all the time in the 30's and 40's.

The diverse group of contestants that survived the initial 60+ car pileup kept the book moving. The time and space-warping GPS units were a nice touch. You never can trust those assholes when you need them.

While I was pretty sure I knew how the race was going to turn out, Hendrixson had me doubting myself a few times, that magnificent bearded bastard! It's hard to sustain humor, especially that of the Bizarro flavor, for an entire book but Eric Hendrixson did a great job of it. There were many quotable lines but I was too busy to write them down and not drunk as some people would allege.

If you only read one book featuring a drunken cross country race in 2016, make sure it's Drunk Driving Champion by Eric Hendrixson. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

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