If you grabbed the best elements of Raymond Chandler's literature, wrapped it all in bizarre alien, zombie and furry madness, threw in a few martial arts movies and sprinkled enough one liners on top of it to keep the late, great Rodney Dangerfield satisfied, you might end up with something as good as Garrett Cook's latest book, "Jimmy Plush, Teddy Bear Detective," his first with Eraserhead Press.

The book is a thoroughly entertaining mix of pulp and humor with a distinctively hard-boiled/noir detective story vibe to it that makes it very hard to put it down. The catch? The man with the attitude that does all the shooting, spits out all the one liners and treats his Chinese driver as a slave just happens to be stuck inside the body of a three foot tall teddy bear with no genitalia and a custom teddy-bear .45 in his fingerless hand.

The story begins when a man called Hatbox wakes up in the body of a teddy bear, wearing a trench coat and a fedora after accepting an offer to clear some gambling debts, which serves as a good introduction to the detective stories that follow. Although one would think that the premise itself is funny enough, Cook masterfully constructs a character for whom you feel no pity and who keeps you more than amused for the duration of the book. In fact, one conversation Plush has with a woman at a party, during which he proposes marriage, is worth the price of the book. 

"Jimmy Plush, Teddy Bear Detective" truly pays homage to the pulp/noir novels of 1950s and each short story packs a harder punch than the previous ones. While for some readers, having a teddy bear detective getting the stuffing kicked, cut, pulled and shot out of him in a city where prostitutes dress as furries might be weird enough, Cook apparently wanted his readers to build a tolerance for outrageous humor and otherworldly experiences.

The result is a book with a bizarro crescendo that delivers a final chapter unlike anything else you've ever read. In the end, going along for the ride is just a pleasure that the reader shouldn't try to comprehend. I think Mr. Plush said it best with these words: "My time as a detective taught me that in the end the solution to every case is that life doesn't make sense and it doesn't have to. A giant mobster can have a belly full of hookers residing in a cake city sometimes." And in this book, that isn't even the zenith of bizarre goodness by a long shot.

As an author, Cook is obviously familiar with how pulp literature works, and in this book he has twisted all that knowledge into something that hopefully takes the genre in a new direction. The prose is sharp and the dialogue reads like Elmore Leonard on acid and steroids. Last but not least, Plush's conversations with his chauffer, a Chinese martial arts master named Chang, are as politically incorrect as they are hilarious.

If you're looking for a book that will make you laugh a lot and cringe a few times, check out "Jimmy Plush, Teddy Bear Detective." The worst that could happen is that you realize you have to buy all of Garrett Cook's books.