Overview
What's in a license plate? Plenty, if the tag reads BIG AL.
In this "wickedly inventive" (Los Angeles Times) and "darkly comic tale" (People), mild mannered Al Tuschman, a salesman from New Jersey, is mistaken for Al Marracotta, a major New York mobster with some very nasty enemies-enemies who hire a pair of bumbling hitmen to turn the paradise of Big Al's Key West vacation into a living hell. When the wrong Big Al is targeted, cries of Why me? fill the tropical night-and the gentle Tuschman must turn tougher than his namesake to save his own life.
Synopsis
Two guys named Big Al--one, a salesman; the other, a New York Mafioso. Too bad the genius Key West hitmen can't tell them apart.
Publishers Weekly
His seventh comic thriller set in the Florida Keys finds Shames running out of fun. The usual suspects make up the cast of charactersbumbling two-bit Mafioso grifters and hitmen who find themselves in ludicrous situationsbut the players seem perfunctorily one-dimensional, and their predicaments, while humorous in premise, come off contrived rather than comic. Minor mobster Nicky Scotto is convinced that rival Big Al Marracottaa five-foot midget who replaced him as boss of the Mafia-run Fulton Fish Marketpoisoned him with bad clams. He enlists Chop Parilla, a Hialeah hot car dealer and his henchman, Squid Berman, to even the score. They plan to get Big Al when hes on vacation in Key West with his willowy girlfriend, Katy Sansone. The two hoods think theyve found their victim, except theres more than one guy in Key West with Big Al license plates. When Squid and Chop mistakenly zero in on hulking Al Tuschman, former high school football hero and Jersey furniture salesman, they play tepid dirty tricks such as putting 50 pounds of spoiled calamari in the wrong Als Lexus, and a live lobster in his bed. Ultimately, Katy becomes fed up with being the sex toy of the degenerate mini-mobster Al, and opts for Al the gentle giant. Meanwhile, Nicky, anxious to regain his former position as head honcho of the fish market, contracts a hit to assassinate his rival. The new lovers, Al and Katy, are entertaining characters, but their amiable romance doesnt keep the plot from getting corny or tired. Unlike his bestselling contemporaries Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen, who consistently bring freshness to similar material, Shames seems to have misplaced the enthusiasm that marked his early work (Florida Straits, etc.). (June)