A Hoarse Half-Human Cheer (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780692270738)

A medieval schoolmaster whose students stabbed him to death with their pens---his name lives on in the College of Saint Cassian of Imola, a school with spectacular troubles. World War II has ended, and overnight Saint Cash's has recklessly expanded from a dozen students to 4,500. Unknown to the honest clerics who think they run the place, the Newark Mafia find the college a handy front for dealing in war surplus materials. It's a tough scene for a green kid like apprentice mortician Moon Gogarty, even tougher for basketball coach Douglas Knox, a priest with a drinking problem who receives mysterious threats on his life. And both Knox and Moon face a powerful temptation: mobster mistress Aisling Vastasi. In this sinister comedy, the mob blackmails a pedophile priest in order to take over his lucrative charity, The Children's Crusade. Events follow fast: a car-bombing, a fiery holocaust, an exorcism that ends in terror, a raid on a brothel, a college commencement that turns into a shoot-out, a play-off basketball game in which rival gamblers have bribed both teams. Alternately blood-curdling and hilarious, this is a gripping story full of sudden twists. Devotees of the thrillers of Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiassen, and Janet Evanovich will find A Hoarse Half-human Cheer in the same league

Author: X. J. Kennedy
ISBN-10: 0692270736
ISBN-13: 9780692270738
Publisher: Curtis Brown Unlimited
Language: English
Published: 07/14/2014
Pages: 402
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.02lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.51w x 0.82d

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 01/01/0001
Kirkus Reviews 06/01/2015