In his career as a versatile voice on The Simpsons, Spïnal Tap bassist, and host of NPR's Le Show, Harry Shearer has proven to be a cutting satirist in many media. The novel, however, is not one of them. Aiming for wide-ranging, Carl Hiaasen-esque farce in Not Enough Indians, he tells of a destitute New York burg that pretends to be a Native American community to get government funds for opening the world's biggest casino. Sadly, this witty premise is dragged down by an ungainly number of overly broad characters (self-involved small-town bureaucrats, stereotypical mobsters, greedy entrepreneurs), while an unfortunate penchant for narrative overchoreography buries any good jokes under a pile of adjectives.
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