Everybodys Duc

Fans of Wilson's cartoons will recognize his style, a mixture of the grotesque and the ridiculous that is often funny and occasionally scary. Retired government agent (and narrator) John Weston is dragged back into harness with his former boss, ace detective Enoch Bone. Weston has a would-be hard-boiled voice reminiscent of Archie Goodwin, and the cranky, meticulous Bone could be a slimmer Nero Wolfe. After a failed assassination attempt in the Oval Office, Bone and Weston are drafted to nab the culprits. They turn out to be legendary evil geniuses the Mandarin, the Professor and Spectrobert, together for the first time in a fiendish plot to abduct the president, perform a kind of lobotomy (although President Pat Parker is already empty-headed) and then rule the world. The eponymous duck is Quacky, creation and symbol of cartoonist Art Waldo's New Jersey theme park, Waldo World. There are complicated dangers, devices and denouements aplenty for readers willing to slog through this heavy pastiche. Wilson also wrote Eddy Deco's Last Caper. (Nov.)