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NEW Video
The Coming of Age Quartet
by David Benjamin
Benjamin talks about his inspiration for a coming-of-age “quartet” that has few parallels in contemporary literature.
Coming Soon from Last Kid Books:
The Voice of the Dog
by David Benjamin
Farfel has sworn an oath to serve and protect the people of New York. Unfortunately, his master is killing the people of New York.
Farfel is a German shepherd and a retired NYPD K-9 police officer. Early in David Benjamin’s novel, The Voice of the Dog, Farfel realizes that his new master, Reggie Stockwell, is murdering people in one of the nicer neighborhoods of Brooklyn. Reggie, perhaps the most sexually frustrated man in all of New York, has determined to kill as many lovers as he can—especially women—in hopes of starting a trend that results in the end of sex as we know it.
Farfel’s only hope to end the carnage is to talk Reggie out of the next murder, or maybe the murder after that.
As Farfel explains, all dogs can talk. Unfortunately, the rare human who understands Dogspeak is usually either a lunatic or a little kid. Reggie, who’s nuts, understands every word Farfel utters.
January 2022 • Saturday Afternoon at the Bookstore
On a chilly day in January, Literatus & Co., a congenial bookstore on Main Street in Watertown, Wisconsin, proprietors Wes and Isabel threw a launch party for the third in David Benjamin’s small town crime series, featuring police chief Jim Otis, Woman Trouble.
In a cozy reading room at Literatus, a group of Midwestern literati gathered to talk of books, writing and Benjamin’s books, of cabbages and kings. This informal roundtable turned into a lively conversation that lasted longer — and rendered more enjoyment — than expected.
Videographer Michael Raymond, the creator of Benj’s YouTube channel, was on hand to record the whole session. Later, he edited away all the hemming, hawing and surplusage. He titled the resulting video ”Saturday Afternoon at the Bookstore.” Take a look!
Last Kid News:
The author is in Paris.
Since 1995, David Benjamin and wife Junko Yoshida have owned a garret in the Fifth Arrondissement of Paris and have lived there either part- or full-time ever since. This explains why Paris appears in scenes, settings and whole books in a number of Benjamin’s titles.
Notably, in Skulduggery in the Latin Quarter, Benjamin revives Elliot Paul’s most engaging character, the suave and languid Homer Evans, through his novel’s beautiful and brilliant protagonist, Circe Evans, granddaughter of Elliot Paul’s hero. A motley crew of Parisians range across the city and flirt with death in a race to save the most precious “lost book” of the twentieth century.
In Three’s a Crowd, a trio of murderous husbands spend a day killing their wives in Paris and then rendezvous at La Coupole, one of the four great literary cafés of Montparnasse, to compare notes on a plot that was hatched in Las Vegas.
In Bistro Nights, three love triangles unfold across the tables and terrasses of Paris restaurants, cafés, bars, brasseries and cabarets. These turbulent stories stretch back in time to the brief era when “apache gangs” ruled the underworld of Paris and gave birth to the violent, dramatic and erotic “danse apache”
In Benjamin’s essay collection, Almost Killed by a Train of Thought, grand prize winner in its genre in the 2019 Independent Press Awards, a group of essays on Paris appears under the heading, “We’ll Always Have Paris.”
If you scroll down Benjamin’s “Weekly Screed” list, you’ll find even more references to the City of Light.
However, David Benjamin’s locales stretch beyond Paris—and Wisconsin—and cover the world. His newest Last Kid Books title, The Voice of the Dog, now available for purchase on this site, is set in Brooklyn, New York. And his next title. Cheat, scheduled for release in August, takes place in the fictional Wisconsin hamlet of Hercules. Cheat is the fifth in Benjamin’s smalltown crime series featuring police chief Jim Otis. Previous installments are Jailbait, Bastard’s Bluff, Woman Trouble and Dead Shot.
The Voice Of The Dog
The Melting Grandmother
Bistro Nights
Dead Shot
The Life and Times of the Last Kid Picked
Last Kid Books
is a publishing house with a sense of humor. Dedicated — at its outset — to publishing the works of prolific storyteller David Benjamin, LKB embodies Benjamin’s wry wit and narrative adventurousness.
Last Kid Books takes its name from David Benjamin’s beloved Midwestern coming-of-age story, The Life and Times of the Last Kid Picked (published by Random House in 2002). Benjamin is also author of SUMO: A Thinking Fan’s Guide to Japan’s National Sport, a Charles E. Tuttle title, revised in 2010, that has been in print since 1990. Two previous Benjamin novels, Three’s A Crowd (a noir comedy) and A Sunday Kind of Love (a football romance), have been added to the Last Kid Books imprint, as well as Black Dragon, released in July 2019.
David Benjamin is a novelist, journalist, provocateur and habitual humorist who has lived his life — occasionally to his chagrin — by the words of Nobel laureate Juan Ramon Jimenez: “If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.”
Last Kid Books is Benjie’s showcase.
