Former Basic Books editor Liebmann-Smith, who cocreated Comedy Central's The Tick
, takes “what's in a name?” to amusing extremes in his debut novel. Novelist Henry James and Harvard psychologist William James really did have two younger brothers, neither of whom amounted to much. That situation changes drastically in Liebmann-Smith's goofball historical conceit, part The Bostonians
and part Blazing Saddles
. In 1876, Henry James travels by train on a New York Tribune
–commissioned journalistic tour. When the train is suddenly ambushed by a group of bandits led by Frank and Jesse James, the latter exclaims, on encountering the novelist: “Holy shit.... It's Harry!” The jokes and historical squiblets go off like six-guns in the 200-plus pages that follow, with Frank and Jesse James starring as the wayward brethren of the illustrious New England Jameses (which, in real life, they most certainly were not). Liebmann-Smith includes enough plot, to keep this single-joke, creatively imagined biography chugging along. (June)
