From Library Journal
The heroine of Banbury's first novel is a wisecracking, motorcycle riding, part-time Los Angeles bookseller named Jill who becomes involved in a search for a valuable first edition of a Jack London novel. Her attempts to recover the book before meeting bodily harm bring her into close proximity to a thuggish dwarf, a former child star, a devilishly handsome leading man, and a wicked movie producer and politician wannabe. The good guys include a Pakistani veterinarian, a highjacked water delivery man who is a recovering alcoholic, and Scott, an old friend of Jill's from their college days. The scene shifts to and from Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and the Hollywood Hills before good triumphs over evil. Banbury can't keep up with the frenetic pace she sets for herself (in terms of both language and action), but she comes mighty close. She succeeds in turning the hard-boiled detective genre on its head, mixing humor and mayhem with aplomb. Banbury has also grounded Jill nicely, so that she holds our interest throughout. A good public library purchase.
-?Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
When laconic bookstore clerk Jill buys a rare Jack London first edition from an impatient dwarf, she buys herself a world of trouble. She unloads the London for a hefty profit but is confronted by a big guy who calls himself the Joke Man; he wants the book back and sets the dwarf's hair on fire as proof of the seriousness of his request. And so begins Jill's wild quest in search of the missing volume, which takes her to an antiquarian book fair, Las Vegas gambling casinos, and a Hollywood movie set. Along the way, she is drugged and tortured but makes a grand escape in a hijacked bottled-water delivery truck, all the while unleashing a steady stream of vicious, hilarious insults at whoever gets in her way. Jill's wicked wit and tough-girl demeanor make for a refreshing change of pace in a first novel that is part noir, part comic caper. A hard-boiled heroine for our times. Let the series begin. Joanne Wilkinson
From Kirkus Reviews
A curiously discordant and inchoate first novel set in Los Angeles and environs, and focussed on a thinly characterized young woman in pursuit of (and fleeing from) a gaggle of southern California grotesques, as well as her own recent past. Having drifted cross-country after her mother's death, Jill finds herself working at the Bitter Muse Bookstore. A passing dwarf who needs quick cash sells her a signed Jack London first edition, but returns soon thereafter, accompanied by a menacing companion, to demand it back. Alas, Jill has already sold the volume to Timmy, a bookseller acquaintance and former child movie star who lives along the Venice Beach canals surrounded by pet ducks, and who has inconveniently disappeared. The whimsy thickens as Jill's efforts to reclaim the fugitive book lead her to the Las Vegas casinos, a bit role in a film being shot by famed actor-director John Malcome, encounters with both disguised movie extras and real cops, and a climactic standoff that skillfully mimics the overexplanatory conclusions of any number of classic film thrillers. Besides the dwarf, Jill's antagonists and accomplices in this seesaw caper include a malnourished dog, a baffled water-delivery man, and an all-night veterinarian. It's hard to understand how they all interrelate and signify--but there are occasional fleeting echoes of James Purdy's Malcolm, another colorfully giddy tale of an embattled innocent. Darker matters are suggested--a father who may have had his son killed; the likelihood that Jill helped her cancer-ridden mother to die--but Banbury leaves these undeveloped. A smoothly written debut, graced with neat turns of phrase (a vomiting cat ``convulsed . . . like a furry accordion''; a roller- coaster ``loop[s] through the dark like a low-hanging constellation''), but its arbitrary weirdness makes it a chore to wade through. Interesting, overall, but crucially flawed. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
...."Like a Hole in the Head" is a lively send-up of the traditional mystery novel: it can be read as a slapstick answer to "The Maltese Falcon." Jill is just as hard-boiled as Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade, and she's a lot funnier.... This isn't a novel that asks to be taken seriously; there's an intentionally cartoonish quality to almost all its characters and situations. The major exception is Jill, who's a thoroughly appealing heroine - quick-witted, resourceful and surprisingly tenderhearted....
Banbury does stumble now and then. Her sense of humor, which at its best is a pleasure, too often descends to the level of the sophomoric.... If you're looking for subtle wit and exquisite literary artistry-if you've just finished reading the collected works of Jane Austen, say, and you're looking for a contemporary equivalent - "Like a Hold in the Head" would not be the best place to start.
If, on the other hand, you're looking for a fast-paced comic novel with a wisecracking heroine who's rowdy, crude, good natured and smart, you need look no further. "Like a Hole in the Head" is an enjoyable debut from a gifted new writer. -- The New York Times Book Review, May 3, 1998
...an exhilarating, disturbing vision of a hostile cultural landscape. -- The San Francisco Chronicle, Peter Handel
A marinade of loney-girl tough-talk enriches playwright Jen Banbury's wonderfully raucous and raunchy debut mystery, set in Los Angeles made memorable by fresh insights. "I took Venice Boulevard," says Jill, who works in a used bookstore. "Past all the two-story buildings where old women laid out their cast-off clothes like a distress signal. They would sit around in beach chairs waiting to sell wrinkled muumuus for two bucks a pop. Past the strip malls with the five dollar manicure places. Past Donut Heaven, Donut Time, Winchel's Donuts, Time for Donuts, I Love Donuts, Falafel and Donuts, Jimmy's Donuts, and Dough-nutty. Past the Hare Krishna temple. I had gone there once for a free vegetarian meal. They asked me to leave before serving me. You have to chant before you can eat and I kept saying 'Hairy Hitler' instead of Hare Krishna. The girl praying next to me blew the whistle. I was hungry and I shouldn't have been such a wiseass. I've heard theo food is pretty good."
There's also a plot, of sorts: A rare first edition of a Jack London work drops Jill into a bizarre and dangerous substratum of desperate dwarfs, failed actors and lethal antiquarian book dealers. -- Chicago Tribune, May 3, 1998
Jen Banbury, a former AT&T spokesmodel, drives this Generation-X noir thriller like a danger happy teenager on a joy ride. Her heroine is the smart-alecky yet winsome Jill, a slacker whose chief responsibilities are keeping the pantry stocked with Cap'n Crunch and ringing up paperbacks at a used bookstore. When a suspicious-looking dwarf comes in to unload a handsome first edition of Jack London's "The Cruise of the Snark," all hell breaks loose, and Jill is forced to take control of herself and the impossible situation that has sprung up around her. But even as Jill finds herself in a life-threatening cross-fire among unsavory parties vying for the ultra-rare, six-figure volume, she refuses to become a boring adult. During one abduction, she's asked what kind of films she likes. "Kidnapping flicks" is the answer. Jill's taste in sarcasm and malt liquor keep her, and the book, going; Jack London would have admired her survival instincts, and he'd recognize Banbury's L.A. as an untamable wilderness. -- Los Angeles Times, September 6, 1998
Brilliant read. Very enjoyable. Laughed out loud a lot 👌Nat.W
