Overview
Murray Zemelman - lingerie mogul, a.k.a. the Bra King - wakes up one morning, starts his car in the confines of his airtight garage, and contemplates the worst. But instead of doing himself in, he pops a Prozac and hits the road, waving good-bye to his trophy wife, the thriving brassiere business, and the streets of New Jersey for good. He's headed to Florida, home of his first wife, Franny, whom he was stupid enough to leave all those years ago. But now he wants to start fresh. Is it a brilliant insight? A glitch in his Prozac dosage? Who cares? He's off to Key West. There, he meets Tommy Tarpon, a local Native American - beaten down and made bitter by the unfairness of life around him, and the last surviving member of his small Florida tribe. Together they cook up a plan: with Murray's business acumen and Tommy's ability to make the most of government statutes, Key West could very well get its first legal gambling parlor on Tommy's tribal grounds - a tiny, alligator-infested island just off the coast. But gambling in Key West isn't an original idea, and a whole other species of reptiles is interested in the plan. With the "assistance" of Key West's crookedest politician, a local Mafioso makes Murray and Tommy an offer they can't refuse. All Murray wanted was to woo his first wife away from her reading group and into the Jacuzzi - but he ends up getting her, himself, and Tommy into more hot water than he ever bargained for.Murray Zemelman, a.k.a. "the bra king, " leaves his trophy wife and boring lingerie business in New Jersey and heads out to Key West. There he meets up with Tommy Tarpon, a local Native American from an obscure tribe, and together they cook up a plan to build Key West's first legal gambling parlor on Tommy's tribal grounds.
Synopsis
"Sunny screwball comedy."
—New York Times Book Review
Digby Diehl
"It's hilarious." -- Playboy
Editorials
Digby Diehl
"It's hilarious." -- PlayboyKirkus Reviews
Candide in Key West, from a rising master of mafia comedy.Sitting in his suburban New Jersey garage one dismal morning, Murray Zemelman ("the bra king") decides not to kill himself—and instead drives away from his bosomy young second wife and keeps driving till he's at the end of US 1. His escape from the rat race energizes Murray so much that his psychiatrist suggests he imagine his fishing line a ground wire that carries off the excess energy, and Murray dreams blissful dreams of "tiny lightning bolts hissing like matches doused in a shallow sea crammed full of finned and smiling creatures." But everybody's got to do something, and Murray soon takes up the cause of Tommy Tarpon, last of the Matalatchee, who's getting leaned on by mobster Charlie Ponte and his bagman, State Senator Barney LaRue, to front a casino. At the Bra King's urging, Tommy applies to LaRue for tribal ownership of minuscule Kilicumba Island; LaRue, seeing dollars as brilliant as Murray's fish, falls all over himself to expedite the grant; and when Ponte's goons make Tommy an offer he can't refuse for his cooperation in opening a casino on the island, he refuses. Big mistake—for Tommy, for Murray, and for Murray's first wife, Franny Rudin, whom he's avid to rekindle his post-marital romance with, even though she acidly reminds him that in their 21 years together, "the most political thing I ever saw you do was buy stamps." Okay, once the schlemiel hits the fan, there's not much left to watch except the triumph of grit and ingenuity and sunset romance as the purity of the heroes, rather than their virtue, armors them against disaster. But Shames recycles enough characters from his earlier farces (Sunburn, 1995, etc.) to keep his old fans happy and provides enough snappy, joyous patter to snag his share of new ones.
Oh, the people—and the sentences—you'll meet this time.