Happy Doll

Series · 3 books · 2021-2025

By Jonathan Ames

Books in series

A Man Named Doll

2021

Happy Doll is a charming, if occasionally inexpert, private detective living just one sheer cliff beneath the glass houses of Mulholland Drive with his beloved half-Chihuahua half-Terrier, George. A veteran of both the Navy and LAPD, Doll now works through the night at a local Thai spa that offers its clients a number of special services. Armed with his sixteen-inch steel telescope baton, biting dry humor, and just a bit of a hero complex, the ex-cop sets out to protect the mostly undocumented immigrant women who work there from clients who have trouble understanding the word "no." Doll gets by just fine following his two basic rules: bark loudly and act first. But when things get out-of-hand with one particularly violent patron, even he finds himself wildly out of his depth.

The Wheel of Doll

2022

The eponymous and hapless detective Happy Doll returns with a new philosophy and a new case in this second installment of a series “that's a tightly coiled double helix of offbeat humor and unflinching violence” (NYTBR) Although badly scarred and down to his last kidney after the previous caper, Happy Doll is back in business. When a beguiling young woman turns up at his door, it’s Doll’s past that comes knocking. Mary DeAngelo is searching for her estranged mother, Ines Candle—a singular and troubled woman Doll once loved. The last he’d seen her she’d been near-death: arms slit like envelopes. Although she survived the episode, she vanished shortly thereafter. Now, years later, Mary claims Ines is alive and has recently made contact—messaging her on Facebook and calling her from a burner phone—only to disappear once again. Although his psychoanalyst would discourage it, Doll takes the case, desperate to see Ines again. But as the investigation deepens, there are questions he can’t shake. What’s led the flighty Ines to reappear? Is Mary only relaying half the truth? And who is Mary’s strange and mysterious husband? In this wholly original follow-up to A MAN NAMED DOLL, Happy travels through L.A., Washington, Oregon and back again—a journey that gets wilder and woolier with each turn. An irreverent and inventive mystery, THE WHEEL OF DOLL is not to be missed.

Karma Doll

2025

Plagued by death on his conscience, Happy Doll has committed himself to a simple, spiritual life; that is, until a tragic and brutal murder forces his hand and sets him back on the bloody path of retribution and justice. After narrowly escaping with his life at the hands of a murderous Hollywood pimp, detective Happy Doll, bullet-ridden but healing, has landed on a remote Mexican beach. In a humble shack and with his dog for company, Doll settles into a peaceful idyll of Buddhist study. But then trouble, as it always does, comes to paradise. Doll is the witness to a murder for which he is framed, and now, with an expired passport and the Mexican authorities on his tail, he must sneak across the border back to L.A. by any means necessary, with the goal of bringing the true murderer to justice. But it's not just trouble that expels Doll from paradise! His dark past reaches for him, like a hand from the grave, old enemies want him dead, including the Jalisco Cartel, and Doll, a reluctant instrument of mayhem, yearns to end this cycle of violence and tip the karmic scales in his favor. But how can he do this without getting blood on his hands? Karma Doll marks the third installment in a madcap, bloody, and impossibly fun series, bringing us back in the good company of Happy a beloved, introverted anti-hero who has taken more hits to the head than a linebacker, yet still always manages to come out on top.

Author

Jonathan Ames

Author · 14 books

Jonathan Ames is the author of the books The Double Life is Twice As Good, I Pass Like Night, The Extra Man, What's Not to Love?, My Less Than Secret Life, Wake Up, Sir!, I Love You More Than You Know, and The Alcoholic (a graphic novel illustrated by Dean Haspiel). He is the editor of Sexual Metamorphosis: An Anthology of Transsexual Memoirs. He is the winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship and is a former columnist for New York Press. Wake Up, Sir! and The Extra Man are in development as films, with Mr. Ames having written the screenplays. He adapted What's Not to Love? as a TV special for the Showtime network and he played himself. At the time, he said, "It's the role I've been waiting for!" The special aired in December 2007 and January 2008. Mr. Ames has also written a TV pilot for the HBO network, Bored to Death, and this will be filmed in the fall of 2008. The pilot will star Jason Schwartzman as "Jonathan Ames". Bored to Death was originally a short story by Mr. Ames which was published in McSweeney's #24 (fall 2007). In addition to writing, Jonathan Ames performs frequently as a storyteller (often with The Moth) and has been a guest on the Late Show with David Letterman. He has had two amateur boxing matches, fighting as "The Herring Wonder," and he had a one-man show off-off-Broadway, entitled Oedipussy. Mr. Ames had the lead role in the IFC film The Girl Under the Waves and was a porn-extra in the porn film C-Men.