Fredric Brown might best be remembered for "Arena", a man-vs-alien tale that's been adapted into an episode of Star Trek and a bunch of other things, officially and otherwise. He was prolific in both science fiction and mystery.
The Fabulous Clipjoint is one of his mystery novels, the first in a series. In it, young Ed Hunter's printer father is murdered in an alley. Ed teams up with his carney uncle Am (short for Ambrose) to bring the murderer to justice. Along the way, he drinks alcohol for the first time, fends off his sexually precocious younger stepsister, and falls in love with both a hard luck gold digger and the trombone.
So yeah, Brown basically invented Tom Waits.
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