Overview
Mickey Prada's a nice kid. He works hard at a neighborhood seafood market in Brooklyn putting fish on ice. He’s got a nice girlfriend. He even delayed college a year, to help his sick dad. But Mickey’s got a problem. A customer at the fish store, Angelo Santoro, keeps asking Mickey to place bets for him and Angelo keeps losing. As Angelo gets further in the hole, his bad luck is turning out to be Mickey’s too.
Now Mickey’s got his bookie after him and Angelo’s showing him the butt of his pistol rather than paying him back. So when his best friend, Chris, asks Mickey to join him on a can’t-lose caper, Mickey decides to go along. But, surefire schemes often have a way of backfiring, and this one is sending Mickey into an uncharted part of Brooklyn, where fish like Chris and Mickey have trouble just staying alive.
Synopsis
2004 Barry Award Winner
and 2004 Anthony Award Nominee
for Best Paperback Original
Mickey Prada's a nice kid. He works hard at a neighborhood seafood market in Brooklyn putting fish on ice. He’s got a nice girlfriend. He even delayed college a year, to help his sick dad. But Mickey’s got a problem. A customer at the fish store, Angelo Santoro, keeps asking Mickey to place bets for him and Angelo keeps losing. As Angelo gets further in the hole, his bad luck is turning out to be Mickey’s too.
Now Mickey’s got his bookie after him and Angelo’s showing him the butt of his pistol rather than paying him back. So when his best friend, Chris, asks Mickey to join him on a can’t-lose caper, Mickey decides to go along. But, surefire schemes often have a way of backfiring, and this one is sending Mickey into an uncharted part of Brooklyn, where fish like Chris and Mickey have trouble just staying alive.
Publishers Weekly
Mickey Prada is a quiet, unassuming teenager working in a fish market and living in Brooklyn, but by the end of this merciless, action-packed black comedy, he might as well be living in hell. Starr (Cold Caller; Hard Feelings) delivers a wild ride through a mob-saturated Italian-American community in 1980s New York, keeping the surprises coming up to the last sentence. A new customer, Angelo Santoro, asks Mickey to place a few sports bets for him. Santoro seems to be a Made Guy, so Mickey doesn't feel he can refuse. But Santoro never makes good on his losses. As Mickey quickly plunges into debt, he grows desperate for a way out, even agreeing to go in on a house robbery with his pal Chris and some guys from his bowling team. From that point on, his downward slide is steep and seemingly unstoppable. A couple of dates with Rhonda, one of the first girls he likes who actually seems to like him back, provide a spell of relief, only to become another torment when her father tells Mickey to stop coming around. The neighborhoods and OTB parlors and other fixtures of the local scene are captured perfectly, and the manic back-and-forth between Mickey and his friends is hilarious. Starr moves deftly through his milieu, twisting expectations and producing a grim comedy, something that may surprise-but shouldn't disappoint-those who know him for his earlier, more straightforward Jim Thompson-style lowlife crime novels. (Dec. 31) Forecast: Given the current appetite for stylish and funny mob stories, this genre-bender should get a lot of press attention. A full-blast advertising campaign and six-city author tour will help sales. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.