A killer has the diehards of the Elvis Presley fan club All Shook Up and the only man for the job is the King himself. Elvis skips out on recording sessions to become a private investigator and locks horns with an early impersonator, sings in random gospel choirs, cheats on Priscilla, and ponders the calorie count of one too many peanut butter and banana sandwiches.
I love Elvis. He's on my personal Mount Rushmore of rock icons. The voice, the style, the unbridled spirit of rock and goddamn roll - it's always going to move me. I'm even listening to Elvis as I type this review. So with that being said, you'd think I'd be more amenable to Elvis in fiction. I mean, he pops up everywhere, from films like Bubba Ho-Tep or True Romance to Douglas Adams and Kim Newman books. It seems like every creative mind with a kooky story idea wants to somehow shoehorn Elvis into the narrative... and I can't exactly blame them. Even now as we get ever closer to 50 years since his death, the King is still a hot selling ticket.
And I admit, I was lured in by the premise of Kill Me Tender. Elvis solving a murder mystery sounds like the perfect kind of goofy-ass yarn that's right up my alley. But turning over the last page left me with A Mess of Blues. I felt Way Down. Just like a Puppet on a String. I almost wanted to start Crying in the Chapel. Doncha' Think It's Time that I stopped wedging all of these Elvis song titles into the review as puns and just got on with it?
I think my biggest problem with this novel is the characterization of Elvis here is... it's as if author Daniel Klein watched a marathon of Elvis movies and decided "Ya know, I'm gonna write my novel just like one of his films... only cheesier!" This is one of the most cornball depictions of Elvis I've ever come across. The real life Elvis had his share of very human flaws. He was possessive and jealous, had a foul temper at times, and of course, he had demons that came in a pill bottle plaguing him repeatedly throughout his life. I understand not wanting to depict all of the man's foibles in a piece of fiction, especially if you're aiming for more lighthearted fare, but this version of Elvis becomes so hokey and fake it really does come across like some kind of kitschy novelization of a lost Elvis movie. The only thing missing is a goofy name for the main character like Rusty Wells or Lucky Jackson.
I was also put off by some of what I can only see as progressive politics talking points the author wanted to jam into his book for headpats (and probably to increase the likelihood of getting it published), showing us that social justice is a disease that stretches back a lot further than the past several years. The author appears to be extra hellbent on having his fictional Elvis bump uglies with a black woman. We know now that Elvis just liked all the girls, period, and it likely didn't matter what color they were to him, but Mr. Klein definitely wants you to know that his Elvis is progressive and oh-so-modern cosmopolitan when it concerns interracial relationships in the early 1960's deep south. He also has Elvis interact with a black lesbian psychic, which made me roar with laughter for all the wrong reasons. Honestly, I'm surprised Netflix didn't pick this trash up for their latest Elvis cash-in over Agent Elvis. You could adapt most of it for today's ESG-obsessed woke television standards with little to no changes.
I'll at least give the author credit for the whodunnit aspect of Kill Me Tender, as that's one of the most important things in a murder mystery. There are a number of viable suspects to be the killer and there are cryptic clues abound in the form of creepy records being delivered to Graceland to taunt Elvis. There's at least the bones of a satisfying mystery novel here, but everything else is T-R-O-U-B-L-E. (Yes, I said I would cease with the song titles. I'm very sorry.)
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