Money Wanders: A Novel - Softcover

Dezenhall, Eric

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312311346 ISBN 13: 9780312311346

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin, 2003

Synopsis

Get Shorty brought the mob to Hollywood. In this hilarious debut, Money Wanders brings a wiseguy mentality to Washington spin, media, and image.

Jonah Eastman, disgraced Beltway pollster, is summoned home by his ailing grandfather Mickey Price, a legendary Atlantic City gangster. When Mickey dies, Jonah is "persuaded" by mob boss Mario Vanni to help improve his image by launching a PR campaign aimed at public acceptance and ultimately a way "outta the life". To pull this off, Jonah enlists the help of his grandfather's Prohibition-era cronies, pimply-faced hackers, a disgruntled Secret Service agent, a cagey D. C. lobbyist, and a street-fighting rabbi.

About this title

About the Author

Eric Dezenhall is the co-founder of Nichols-Dezenhall Communications Management Group, one of the nation's leading crisis management firms, and is the author of Nail 'Em! Confronting High Profile Attacks on Celebrities and Businesses. He lives in Bethesda, MD. This is his first novel.

From Publishers Weekly

Beltway spin doctor Dezenhall (Nail `Em! Confronting High-Profile Attacks on Celebrities and Businesses) tries his hand at fiction with this comic caper about a Jewish pollster put to work for an aging South Jersey/Philly Mafia don. Middle-aged Jonah Eastman, a D.C. spin doctor for hire whose business is in the doldrums, is summoned back to his Jersey home by his ailing grandfather Mickey, an old-school Jewish capo for the local Cosa Nostra kingpin, Mario Vanni. Mickey's cryptic deathbed missive to his nervous grandson directs Jonah to take on the don as a client (Vanni needs a fast image makeover in order to qualify for an Atlantic City casino license "To be a gangster anymore is an acid trip. There's nothin' left in the life but the fantasies about the life") and gives Jonah a veiled hint about some buried Jewish treasure long hidden from the Italians. Rallying support from a PR colleague, Mickey's Jewish gangsters (one memorably named "Irv the Curve") and a teenage hacker (nicknamed "Dorkus"), Jonah launches a massive disinformation campaign intended to paint Vanni as a pillar of the community. Along the way, Jonah manages to fall in love with a klezmer musician at Mickey's funeral, tick off Vanni's psychopathic consigliere (incongruously named "Noel") and become probably the only pollster to set up shop inside a giant roadside elephant. Mixing light comedy with a nostalgic look at the Jersey shore and the days when the mishpocha and the paisani were kinsmen, if uneasy ones, Dezenhall's debut is a breezy alternative to The Sopranos and shows that with the right press, even savages can be saints.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0312311346
• ISBN 13: 9780312311346
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352