Move over Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade. There's a new gumshoe named Brute Ballingham.

Together with secretary Moolada and nephew Pinky, this hard drinking private detective is sucked into the seedy 1940s New York crime underworld.

The Excruciating Hello is a five hour wild and bizarre post-modern pastiche of such hardboiled crime noir fiction as The Long Goodbye, The Maltese Falcon, To Have and Have Not, The Red Wind, The High Window, Trouble is My Business, The Lady in the Lake, Farewell, My Lovely, The Big Sleep, and other noir classics originated by such writers as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett.

Chapter One: The Camp Kilmer CaseChapter Two: The Sizable SlumberChapter Three: The Burmese AlbatrossChapter Four: Pinky's Pancake ProblemChapter Five: The Greasy TideChapter Six: To Have A Lot and Not Have A LotChapter Seven: Treble is My BusinessChapter Eight: The Green WindChapter Nine: The Lady Up a CreekChapter Ten: The High WidowChapter Eleven: Adiós Me DamasChapter Twelve: That Monkey Has No Tail