Summary
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. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.
Publishers Weekly Review
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. From: Reed Elsevier Inc.
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