Synopsis
A darkly comic thriller tells the story of Richard Milhous Miller, a twenty-five-year-old American scam artist posing as a Hollywood screenwriter in Prague, who meets his match in the amoral half-gypsy Monika.
Reviews
Breezy, laugh-out-loud school-of-Westlake caper with plenty of nasty, nihilistic twists, the best yet from screenwriter and crime novelist Eversz (Shooting Elvis, 1996, etc.). Part-time American scam artist and full-time cad Richard Milhous ``Nix'' Miller haunts the dreary streets of post-Communist Prague, adding mileage to his monthly inheritance checks by preying on female tourists who just want to have fun. Posing as a ``seven-figure'' Hollywood screenwriter researching the next Tom Cruise/Julia Roberts vehicle, Nix talks the talk long enough to pilfer his victims' pocketbooks. He then grandly rescues his distressed damsels, spending their money on rousing nights on the town that end in his apartment bedroom. Things go from bad--when he bilks the fianc‚e of a local police detective--to worse, as he falls for a similar scam worked by Monika, a sultry young woman who manages to clean him out without wrinkling his bedsheets. Hopelessly in love, Nix apes Woody Allen aping Bogart in Play It Again Sam as he tries to beat Monika at their mutual game. Things get ugly (as they must) when Nix murders Monika's loathsome pimp, Sven, and then tries to pretend that he's sufficiently ruthless, like the American movie heroes of his fantasies, to shrug off the consequences. Instead of a grudging admiration leading to love, Nix and his femme fatale find themselves in a scrambling contest for power and control. Delightfully dismal glimpses of pathetic tourists and gleefully corrupt Balkan landscapes don't lighten the dead-end grimness of a nihilistic, 1990s-style Innocents Abroad. Smart-alecky, frequently hilarious storytelling, with brainy send-ups of vampiric Europeans and idiotic Americans on the dark side of the post-Cold War Grand Tour. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
In the freewheeling Prague of the 1990s, full of fledgling capitalists, con artists, and backpackers, Richard Milhous Nixon Miller, called Nix, tries to pass himself off as a successful Hollywood screenwriter. In fact, he spends his time swindling tourists and preying on young girls. One night he meets beautiful, mysterious Monika, who is traveling with a man she claims is her brother. Monika entices Nix with tragic stories of her gypsy past, and he finds himself falling in love. Monika, of course, is not what she seems. As Nix follows her and her brother (or lover?) across central Europe, he finds himself constantly having to shift his reading of her. Is she a helpless victim or a ruthless manipulator? She draws him deeper into a web of larceny, deceit, and even murder. Nix is ultimately outmatched by her, because he is a romantic, easily deceived because he deceives himself. Prague, with its mix of decrepit Old World charm and anything-goes new world opportunity, is the perfect setting for this tale of escalating disorder. Mary Ellen Quinn
Richard Milhous "Nix" Miller, prodigal son of a California used-car dealer, is a small-time con man and a master at deluding himself and others. Posing as a Hollywood scriptwriter so that he can more easily pick the purses of the women he meets in Prague's cafes and nightclubs, he lives a fairly uneventful life until smitten by a cool, mysterious Danish beauty named Monika. Possibly a princess, possibly part Gypsy, Monika is clearly more than Nix's match as a con artist. After he eliminates her boorish lover, Nix joins her in an escalating series of cons that spin quickly and frighteningly out of control. Cinematic in both style and tone (Eversz, who currently directs the Prague Summer Writer's Workshop, is also a filmmaker and screenwriter), the novel seems like a cross between an elaborately plotted comedy and film noir. Recommended for most public libraries.?Lawrence Rungren, Merrimack Valley Lib. Consortium, Andover, Mass.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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