Monday, June 05, 2006

Headstone City, by Tom Piccirilli

(pb; 2006)

From the back cover:

“The night Johnny Danetello drove a dying girl through the streets of Brooklyn in his cab, he was trying to save her life. Instead he ran down a cop and lost her and his freedom. Every day in prison, Johnny knew that Angie Monticelli's family blamed him for her death, and that going home would be suicide. But Johnny has unfinished business with his former friend turned mob boss, Vinny Monticelli.

“Now Johnny has returned to converse with the doomed and the dead – and wait for Vinny to make his move. Survivors of a long-ago freak accident, the two men share access to alternate realities no one else can know – and to a past and present that will all become the same in a city only one of them can leave alive...”

Review:

This is a quirky, bloody and lusty genre-hopping romp, and easily one of the funnest – if not the funnest, and funniest – novels I've read in the past few months.

Piccirilli has fashioned a shotgun comedy filled with deadpan, B-movie dialogue and dumb bad-guy antics. While the absurdities and bodies start piling up, there's plenty of oh for f**k's sake this can't be happening moments that had this reader giggling in his post-midnight coffee.

Delightful stuff, this. Check it out.

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