Funny Bunny Hunts the Horn Bug

A Max Royster Mystery

By: Frank Hickey

Narrated by: Paul Birchard

To catch a sex killer targeting Upper East Side beauties, NYPD Officer Max Royster goes undercover...as an NYPD cop!

©2012 Frank Hickey (P)2017 Talking Music

About what you’d expect from a beat cop author

I’ve got to pay better attention during sales. If I’d have seen this was written by a former cop, I might had passed on this and saved myself this uninspired listen. I was hoping for a pulpy dime store listen, or a comedic Police Academy style story. Instead, this a cheesy, not very funny love letter to beat cops everywhere. Max Royster is a 6’3”, 200+ lb cop recently assigned an upper class Manhattan beat (think Nick Offerman), but he yearns for the poorer neighborhoods of Brooklyn. Especially in the beginning, there’s a lot of griping about “Com-Pol” or Community Policing, dim police chiefs, ungrateful rich community members and how thankless it is to be a beat cop for $25,000 a year.

It’s not horribly mean spirited, just needlessly full of police lingo and the author’s little digs at the NY police scene. Compared to the policing talks the mystery, characters and dialogue were shallow and one note. Every character is a stereotype. The narrator’s sometimes cringey accents didn’t help, like for the Korean shop owner or Hispanic gang banger. The fight scene at the end, with the fight continuing after multiple broken bones, was laughable, but not in a good way. Further, the way the bad guy confesses his motive upon capture was a scene fit only for a Scooby episode.