FALLING INTO THE MOB

A chance meeting on a commuter train gives a freelance speechwriter a chance to become a mob boss in this comic thriller.

Phil Vail is middle-aged, divorced, settled, and bored when, on the train back to Westchester, he strikes up a conversation with a beauty who turns out to be the daughter of a mob boss. Before the ride is over, Phil will get a taste of just how tough she is and how unforgiving the world in which she was raised. The ride is just Phil's entree into the world of the mob, made even more tempting by Sylvia, the woman on the train. And so Phil assents when offered his own place in the organization. This book aspires to be a comic thriller and also a novel of middle-aged rebirth, similar to late Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiaasen, and the farces of Peter Lefcourt. There are the requisite complications, attempting to compare the screwball and the sinister, and the inevitable ending which promises a new life for our hero. But compared to the effortless mayhem that the authors cited above unleash, the mechanics here show the strain. And the ugly racial stereotype that sets the whole thing in motion imparts a distasteful cast that the story never shakes.

This offer you can refuse.