JOSH WHOEVER

A con artist turns good Samaritan and pays the price.

When Joshua, semipermanently sloshed, ventures out of his habitual corner at the Western World Bar and takes a job as bank teller in the hopes of getting fired and cashing in on unemployment, he doesn’t anticipate that his pinpointing the perp in a bank robbery scam by the shoes he was wearing will lead mobster Sergei Romanov, the grateful but desperate bank owner, to offer him a new gig: find his kidnapped niece, Kiev. Willingly stepping into his new role as a private eye, Josh winds up in a cafe where he meets smart-mouthed babe Marci, a recently fired society-page journalist who thinks a tell-all book about rescuing the daughter of a Russian crime family will net her a bundle. The pair careens from one clue to another, wisecracks flying, guns misfiring, villains escalating, cars whiplashing, as they try to find Kiev before the Romanovs lose patience and kill them for inefficiency. With Kiev’s wacky brother Yuri along for the ride, they head for a mountaintop where two bozos and their victim may be hiding out. But is Kiev really a victim or just a poor little rich girl trying to find peace and harmony outside the family enclave? Many will die and a platoon of gray-shirted government enforcers will helicopter down before Josh can safely retreat to the Western World Bar.

First-timer Guillebeau, whose software programs reside in the International Space Station, churns out wisecracks with machine-gun rapidity. His plot may be improbable, but when the laughs come this fast and funny, who really cares?