Elect H. Mouse State Judge A Novel [Paperback]

A terrible crime occurs inElect H. Mouse State Judge.

Two young girl are abducted and held hostage by a band of religious fanatics. The girls' anxious father, a politician on the eve of an important election, has reasons of his own not to go to the police, so he hires a pair of shady private eyes to investigate. All the elements of a classic noirexcept that the kidnapped girls are mice, the abductors are Sunshine Family dolls, and the detectives are Barbie and Ken.
Part 1970s childhood dreamscape, part Raymond Chandler, this is a world both familiar and transformed. Sex shops, illicit affairs, spies, political hypocrisy, and dangerous zealots may coexist with Barbie and Ken's acrobatic poolside sex, but the crises of faith that Nelly Reifler's characters face are as real as our own.Elect H. Mouse State Judgeis an unusualand masterfulblend of irony and tenderness, and a moving portrayal of a father trying and failing to do the right thing.

Nelly Reifleris the author ofSee Through, a collection of short stories. Her stories have appeared in publications such asMcSweeney's,BOMB,Nerve,jubilat, andThe Milan Review, and have been anthologized in books includingLost Tribe: Jewish Fiction from the EdgeandFOUNDmagazine'sRequiem for a Paper Bag. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and the Pratt Institute, and she is an editor atPost Road. She lives in Saugerties, New York.

William Blake laid it out: Stories are those of innocence or of experience; any messy gray area between the two, presumably, belongs to J.D. Salinger, Judy Blume and whoever else has taught teens important coming-of-age lessons. But what if precious childhood emblems came to life and the limbo between guilelessness and corruption became the norm? . . . While toying with the reader's expectations based on well-known anthropomorphic animal tomes, Reifler does an excellent job weavingl³-