re: Your favorite absurd books?

Edward Whittemore
Sinai Tapestry (The Jerusalem Quartet Book 1)
Jerusalem Poker ( The Jerusalem Quartet Book 2)

On the last day of December 1921, three enigmatic men -- Cairo Martyr, a blue-eyed African who controls the Middle East's supply of aphrodisiac mummy dust; O'Sullivan Beare, a former Irish patriot and gunrunner who has made a fortune selling spurrious, phallic-shaped Christian artifacts; and Mark Szondi, a dedicated Zionist who wagers only fried fish futures -- sit down to a fateful game of poker in the back room of a Jerusalem antiquities shop owned by a 3000-year-old knight errant. The Great Jerusalem Poker Game as it came to be called, would last twelve years and had as its stake nothing less than control of Jerusalem itself...