Praise for Freeze Dry
Freeze Dry by Corson Hirschfeld, Forge Books, Hard cover.

"Freeze Dry keeps antics fresh.
Cincinnati author's zany plot and people pile on the laughs.
. . . Freeze Dry (is) the third and most demented novel yet from the Cincinnati shooter whose photos have appeared in Sports Illustrated, Smithsonian, Fortune and Newsweek.
Frequently compared to Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen, Hirschfeld does crime fiction with several million twists per chapter. They're always humorous twists, always a tad off-the-wall.
No, make that a lot off-the-wall.
I want my mummy.
Set mostly in Gatlinburg, Tenn. - "I love the circus of the city, the nutsiness, the contradiction of all that commercialism on the edge of that beautiful wilderness" - Freeze comes with a gigantic cast of truly bizarre characters who at the start have absolutely no relation to one another but by the end are intertwined into one smarmy ball of humanity.
Freeze is about the sorry life and strange times of Shickie Doone - con man, bogus preacher and founder of the rapture-obsessed Children of Light. He's also a gambling addict, philandering husband and, bless his shriveled heart, a highly sought-after mummy . . .
Hirschfeld (pulls) all this off with an easy, straightforward style. It's extremely visual - no doubt his background as a photographer coming into play - and utterly matter-of-fact even when dealing with events that are anything but matter-of-fact.
There are times in Freeze where you really do need a scorecard. Hirschfeld throws this in your face, too: "Yeah, that's true. I like the complexity and sheer size of it," he says. "I love creating very diverse characters that start very far apart and gradually bringing them together."
He means that in a physical as well as emotional sense. Freeze Dry's impossibly complicated climax is a pile of rioting humanity - literally - climbing all over each other outside the buttonhook museum.
Sorry, can't say anything more without giving too much away. This is one where you need to go find out for yourself."

--Jim Knippenberg, The Cincinnati Enquirer

"Body. And soul. Held together by laughter.

When huckster Shickie Doone isn't charming the last penny out of his Children of Light congregants in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, he's gambling away their tithes on a Vegas junket--until Thaddeus Trout, whom he's into for more than fifty large, sends three goons to bring him back .

. . Nonstop fun that tosses Damon Runyonesque characters into Three Stooges situations with the slapstick insanity that characterized Too High."

---Kirkus Reviews.

"Shickie Doone likes to think he's one of the world's finest con artists, and maybe he is, but recent events don't exactly support that billing. His current scam, in which he poses as the leader of a (bogus) religious group, falls apart . . . Shickie winds up in a deep freeze. And that's only the beginning of his misadventures. Hirschfeld's third novel is reminiscent of early Donald E. Westlake: its characters are quirky, the plot is broadly farcical, the humor combines slapstick and wacky dialogue.

Recommend this one, strenuously, to Hirschfeld fans, Westlake fans, and anyone who likes off-the-wall comedy mixed with a caper plot."

--David Pitt. Booklist (American Library Association).

"Damon Runyon gets taken for a ride in Hirschfeld's offbeat if somewhat labored crime novel featuring a bizarre plot line and the most startlingly yclept cast of characters (e.g., Boogers Tarbell, Creely Patch, Plato Scopes) since Guys and Dolls-or Catch-22."

-Publishers Weekly. ["My kind of review!" says the Stinky Gnome.]