Worth the quick read, but no Missing Links
The book is a sequel to his seminal hysterical golf novel Missing Links. I first ?discovered? that book by sitting next to someone on an airplane who couldn?t stop laughing out loud at the book while he read. After devouring it myself, I gave it as a gift to many of my friends, at least those who golfed. While I don?t always love Rick Reilly?s Sports Illustrated columns, Missing Links was a truly funny tale of a bunch of hacks on Ponky, ?the world?s worst golf course.?
Shanks for Nothing meets up with them years later, and the audio CD (narrated by Nick Stevens) tells us that Ray ?Stick? Hart has gotten married and had a kid. The premise of the book, primarily, is that Ponky is going to be sold. The group ? including characters like Cementhead, Two-Down and Hoover from the first novel ? scheme in their own pathetic ways on how to raise the money they?d need to buy the course.
The story itself isn?t overly complicated, and a casual reader (or, actually, listener) can see a few things coming from a solid par-4 away. (See what I did there? Oh, so clever.) And perhaps it?s Stevens narration, but the jokes seem forced at times as do some of the pop culture references. There?s also a secondary story about Resource Jones, an inmate and former Ponky hack, scheming a breakout from his prison (which also has a golf course.) Both those elements deter from the overall story, but for fans of Missing Links, it?s still well worth the quick read. It certainly made the commute home amusing over the last week or so.
