Shakedown Beach: A Mystery - Hardcover

Dezenhall, Eric

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312307721 ISBN 13: 9780312307721

Publisher: Minotaur Books, 2004

Synopsis

THE GOVERNOR: "Rebound" Rothman -- married, family-values New Jersey Republican with White House fantasies, a terrible secret, and a controversial position on young interns: He's for 'em.

THE TART: Simone Lava, the voluptuous Miss Little Egg Harbor Township. Rebound keeps her hidden away in Atlantic City's seedy Celebrity Motel where she practices waving like a First Lady -- a title she's been promised, if she'll just lay low during election season.

THE FIXER: Jackie Disaster, an ex-boxer who runs the Jersey shore's most ruthless damage-control firm. Jackie digs up the macabre truth about the governor.

THE POLLSTER: Jonah Eastman, maverick political strategist raised by his mobster grandfather, who gave Rebound his start. Jonah knows only one thing can save the congenitally deceitful governor: A whopping, heartfelt lie.

Shakedown Beach rips open the slats of the Atlantic City boardwalk to impart the big lesson of American politics: When forced to look into one's soul and confront the painful truths of murder, corruption and sexual depravity, don't be a schmuck -- hire the nastiest operatives money can buy and duck, dodge and spin to November.

About this title

About the Author

Eric Dezenhall is the co-founder of Dezenhall Resources, one of the nation's leading crisis management firms, and is the author of two novels, Money Wanders and Jackie Disaster, and the nonfiction study, Nail 'Em! Confronting High Profile Attacks on Celebrities and Businesses which has been optioned for TV. He lives in Bethesda, MD.

From the Inside Flap

Praise for Jackie Disaster:
"One of those clever confidence stories that are so full of pleasures in its details...Give it a read."
- The Washington Post

"Jackie Disaster is the best thing to come out of Atlantic City since saltwater taffy."
- Kirkus (starred review)

"If you're keen on The Sopranos and have found yourself wishing Martha Stewart wasn't Living, you will delight in this Atlantic City-based romp starring Giovanni 'Jackie Disaster'' DeSesto. This is a terrific story that puts the murder weapon precisely where it belongs - in the heart of our spin-doctored, sound-biting, celebrity-sleazed litigious society."
- St Petersburg Times

"This novel provides lots of fun in a Carl Hiassen mode."
- Publishers Weekly

Praise for Money Wanders:
"A riotous parody... [Dezenhall's] superb eye and ear at times call to mind such masters of the journalistic novel as Tom Wolfe. This is one for the carry-on bag."
- Time Magazine

"Dezenhall starts us off chuckling, moves us easily to guffaws, and then winds up with some nicely timed belly laughs... If this debut is any indication, Dezenhall's career as a novelist shouldn't need much spinning to take off."
- Booklist (starred review)

"Thoughtful, unpretentious, filled with laugh-out-loud funny scenes and delightfully realized characters. Place your bets on this winner."
- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Reviews

Crisis management guru Dezenhall packs his second political mystery (after 2003's Jackie Disaster) with lots of action and plenty of colorful characters, like pollster Jonah Eastman, whose family connections to gangsters make it hard for him to get respectable work. Jonah is working for the Republican governor of New Jersey, Gardner Rothman, aka Rebound because of his stint with the Philadelphia 76ers. Rebound, who likes to hold meetings while he's sitting on the toilet, is running for a U.S. Senate seat and has a large lead in the polls. Yet he's begun acting as though he expects a bombshell to explode at any moment, and it's up to Jonah and Chief Willie Thundercloud, a onetime pro wrestler who now does damage control for several shady enterprises, to find out why. Dezenhall can write hilarious and brilliant descriptions, and can restate the obvious in fresh ways. "That Tappo's activities were illegal was of no matter because we were now living in the Arthur Andersen age of disclosure, where 'trust' and 'empowerment' in criminal endeavors were key to making the mob an instrument of social equity," Jonah says of a mobster known as Tappo the Clown. Sharp writing like that and some lively, unexpected plotting go a long way to making up for an excess of cute nicknames.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

This sequel to Money Wanders (2002) finds political consultant and damage-control expert Jonah Eastman working for the governor of New Jersey, Gardner "Rebound" Rothman. Up for reelection, Rebound, a family values Republican, is comfortably ahead in the polls, but he is putting pressure on Jonah to dig up as much dirt on his opponent as he can find. Why is the governor acting like he is about to lose, when he is 15 points ahead of his opponent? What is he hiding? And how much trouble is Jonah going to get in when he starts looking for answers? Like Money Wanders, this novel features deft comedy mixed with realistic characters and plenty of behind-the-scenes political shenanigans (like his protagonist, Dezenhall is a noted political consultant and damage-control expert). There is a little Ross Thomas in the way Dezenhall mixes thriller plot elements with political satire, but there's also an over-the-top absurdity here that will appeal to fans of Carl Hiaasen and, especially, Tim Dorsey's very similar Orange Crush (2001). David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Minotaur Books
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312307721
• ISBN 13: 9780312307721
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352