Karma Doll by Jonathan Ames Review

Happy Doll has ripped off an LA gangster and has to leave town for Mexico to hide out and get a new face. Getting tired of the rough and tumble life of a private detective, Doll decides to wait out the pandemic by continuing to study up on Buddhism and getting right with his karma. Though Doll may be done with violence, violence isn’t done with him and fate and his own sense of justice send him back to LA to begin building up more bad karma.

Karma Doll is Jonathan Ames’ third Happy Doll book, which is a surprisingly consistent series, albeit the novels are never that great or that bad - they’re always just ok, as is Karma Doll.

The pacing of the story is stop-start. There are some great set pieces, and when there’s action happening, it’s fantastic - but when there isn’t, Ames is on amble-mode with Doll not doing much besides existing in his shack on the Sea of Cortez, comprising: swimming, enjoying the company of his beloved dog George and his new animal companion Walter the cat, and pondering Buddhism.

That style of storytelling doesn’t lead to the most compelling of reads and some chapters feel superfluous or long-winded while we wait for Doll to get on with things. There’s also the fact that Doll never gets into trouble for long - whatever the jam he’s in, he conveniently gets out of it almost immediately, and sometimes quite miraculously, which doesn’t make the more interesting scenes especially tense.

Doll is pleasant company and charming in his way but the other characters in the story are basically archetypes: the crooked mob lawyer, his spoilt scumbag son, the assortment of cartel thugs thrown at Doll to keep the reader awake - there’s nobody here who stands out as an original creation.

All of which is to say that Ames’ Doll novels are perfectly fine neo-noir thriller-adjacent reads that fans of crime fiction will get along with well-enough - but they’re also kinda light and forgettable. If you’re in the mood for a modern crime novel with a Dude-esque protagonist, check out Jonathan Ames’ Doll novels.