Bøger af Jonathan Schwartz

Marina del Rey attorney Tom McGuire learns that a credit card he never applied for has just been used to buy a new car that winds up in the middle of a 'turf' war outside Santa Barbara, at an idyllic Central California beach called Point Sal. Tom's girlfriend Maria is in danger of being charged with murder and Tom himself is once again betrayed by a former U.S. Attorney's Office co-worker who is in deeper than anyone imagined. Tom's Mafia contacts have retired and opened an Italian Deli/Cooking school called La Cosa Nostra, in which they give cooking classes under the watchful eye of the Federal Organized Crime Strike Force. Tom attends several of these classes. Recipes taught at the cooking school are collected at the back of the book.

Marina del Rey attorney Tom McGuire must defend his client against a charge of carjacking and murder, rescue a proctologist-turned-plastic-surgeon, and battle with a government administrator of the Federal Witness Protection Program. Tom also runs into a modern-day Indian tribe that inhabits a high-rise office building, and some militant environmentalists who have unique methods of combating a Malibu real estate development. The action is set in and around Marina del Rey, California, with excursions to Topanga Canyon and Catalina Island's tiny settlement, Isthmus Cove. Also included are confrontations at sea between Tom's aging Chris-Craft and a Mafia offshore racer. Throughout, attorney McGuire's description of the action that takes place in this novel is a sense of humor that could only come from a person who has performed standup comedy, as author Jonathan Schwartz has.

Tom McGuire is on stage in a comedy club, pursuing his dream as a stand-up wannabe. A disturbance in the audience leads to the discovery that one of Maria's 'clients' at her County job is the aged mother of a Russian caviar smuggler in big trouble with the FBI. Tom represents the smuggler, with disastrous results. A stock promoter Tom prosecuted while working at the US Attorney's office has put Tom's friend and dock neighbor Murray Markoff up to promoting a bogus public company on the Internet, touting the stock of a cold fusion company through a variety of misleading screen-name personae. Throughout, the action is punctuated by Tom's comedy performances and nights in stand-up comedy workshop, and well-informed descriptions of stand-up technique, and the culture of comedy and comedians The author describes the step-by-step process of a classic 'pump and dump' stock scheme, and how promoters have learned to use Internet chat rooms to generate buying momentum