"The R & B wildman Screamin' Jay Hawkins only had a single hit, the classic "I Put a Spell On You, " and was often written off as a clownish novelty act -- or worse, an offense to his race -- but his myth-making was legendary. In [this] novel, Mark Binelli embraces the man and the legend to create a hilarious, tragic, fantastical portrait of this unlikeliest of protagonists. Hawkins saw his life story as a wild picaresque, and Binelli's novel follows...