Steve Zousmer

Falling Into The Mob is fun, crazy, zany, exciting and intriguing. It’s a novel with a 59-year-old protagonist, graphic mob violence, a beautiful, intelligent love interest, big business, perfect dialog, writing and speechwriting, and possibly even some presidential influence. It’s innocent and guilty together, light and dark, humorous and scary, well-reasoned in a world of unreason, and a truly absorbing and surprising read.

The narrator is first seen running for a train. His self-deprecating humor is quickly forgiven for slowing the action down because, after all, we’ve most of us run for busses or taxis or trains, and we know how he feels. We’re happy to run along with him, until the world falls apart. Then we draw back and wonder how he’ll survive, but survive he surely will.

Sudden violence is perfectly balanced with well-wrought humor, introspection is spiced with romantic tension, and speechwriting’s lies are sprinkled with fearsome threats and promises. The voice is smooth and convincing, as is the dialog. Threats feel scarily real while something oddly surreal whispers behind them. The choice of clothes for Thanksgiving (with the mob) is as important as the choice of words for a (politician’s) speech. And the choice to love works in more than one direction.

Of course, in the end, how a speech is received is all about knowing your audience. 59-year-old Phil reads his surroundings well, most of the time. He survives the odd misstep with the help of unexpected friends, allies himself wisely, and surely will find a way to win the girl, or at least to survive. Meanwhile the reader is carried along on a ride of epic proportions, in a world as small as a city’s streets and as large as romantic redemption. Self-deprecating Phil just might have to find the strength to speak his own words, and sweetly intriguing, cleverly powerful Sylvia might achieve her dreams. But what those dreams are and who is manipulating whom—these are questions to be pondered by the reader as the action races on, so fast, so fun, and so seriously cool.

Disclosure: I was given a preview edition by the publisher and I offer my honest review.… (mere)