(2 of 2)
Caught en route in a traffic jam, Scandalous John takes on a "hideously grinning" Buick with his bowie knife, and from then on things get worse. Author Gardner, 31, who lives on an island off Spain's Costa Brava, explains that his inspiration for this first novel was the question: "What would the American knight-errant be like and what would be his fate?" His answers seem to be Scandalous John's repeated cry, "I'm my own man," and his bloody end on a city sidewalk in a confrontation with an uncomprehending guardian of the sanitary code. It's probably just as well, in view of an alternative offered the hero along the way: a job developing a chimpanzee with a window in its stomach for use in aspirin commercials.