Even if it didn't contain a chomped ear and a decapitated head, Ethan Coen's debut fiction collection would resemble the horrifically giggly crime films of the Coen brothers (Fargo, etc.). You've got the bleakly realistic Midwest settings: a frazzled dad driven crazy driving his kids on a camping trip in and "The Boys. and " You've got the minutia of the middle-class life captured down to the last speck of and "abstractly speckled linoleum and " ( and "The Old Country and "). You've got comically incompetent thugs (Mafiosi spectacularly failing to bring Mob rule to Minneapolis in and "Cosa Minapolidan, and " a college-boy boxer turned private dick in and "Destiny and "). You've got ghastly, amusing caricatures of showbiz moguls: the record-company guy soliloquizing in and "Have You Ever Been to Electric Ladyland " could be as real as his allusions to the personal foibles of Cat Stevens and Danny Thomas. Above all, you've got a mockingly self-conscious yet vibrantly original style of pulp-culture homage and spoofy, sharp, vulgar dialogue like nobody else on earth can write, except Joel Coen (who cowrites movies with brother Ethan). In print, Coen can show off a descriptive gift that can't fit into screenplays. His fiction is bright and never boring, but not ambitious - it lacks the obbligato of grim mystery and lyricism that throbs in some of his films. It's on the light side - more like Raising Arizona than Miller's Crossing. It's also the most penetrating glimpse into a Coen brother's mystery-crammed skull since the revealing The Big Lebowski: The Making of a Coen Brothers Film. - Tim Appelo