Midway through Tom Osborne’s second comic novel, Dead Man in the Orchestra Pit, Calgary native Harry Pazik Jr. becomes embroiled in a hotel heist during the insanity of Vancouver’s Grey Cup weekend. Osborne, whose first novel was 2004’s Foozlers, has a talent for no-nonsense action – the sequence is described with such simplicity that it’s impossible not to get caught up in the story.

Unfortunately, the rest of Dead Man is not so straightforward. The story’s structure is jarring: Osborne carefully establishes a rhythm of one character per chapter, then changes tack at the book’s conclusion, where he relates their final fortunes with short summaries. Osborne opts for exposition over economy in the rest of the book, listing the age, height, and weight of each character to no effect, while his preoccupation with a female character’s breasts just seems adolescent. (Even more so when paired in one scene with Harry’s flatulence.)

Though the press release accompanying Dead Man calls it “madcap” and “almost slapstick,” the laughs don’t come quickly enough to earn those adjectives. At times, it looks as if the novel might redeem itself by becoming a postmodern homage to hard-boiled pulp fiction, but those moments are rare.

Osborne’s best-drawn characters are the men pulling the heist, bungling criminals who drink too much and curse a blue streak. Sam Labovic, the ringleader, is endearing when he recalls “the woman and the boy” he left behind in Prince Rupert. Labovic deserves his own book – he’s a warm character in an otherwise cold cast.