cover image A Fool's Gold: A Story of Ancient Spanish Treasure, Two Pounds of Pot, and the Young Lawyer Almost Left Holding the Bag

A Fool's Gold: A Story of Ancient Spanish Treasure, Two Pounds of Pot, and the Young Lawyer Almost Left Holding the Bag

Bill Merritt, . . Bloomsbury, $23.95 (240pp) ISBN 978-1-59691-099-7

Take a hoary old sea coast legend of lost gold, a parade of unwashed, felonious ne'er-do-wells, an utterly corrupt county sheriff; mix them thoroughly with bags and bags of pot, and you've got Merritt's hilarious tale of good intentions, bad luck and even worse body odor. This hairy yarn begins with the death of a marginally compromised, totally debauched attorney and ends with the death of a local oddball; in between is stuffed mystery, suspense and archeology. The text abounds with the author's funny lawyerly griping and plenty of exasperated observations on the bone-headed ways of ordinary citizens ("In the Land of Fresh out of Ideas, the half-baked scheme is king"). Though he traffics in blunt, almost crude physical description of the characters, especially the women ("Her face was round with double chins, almost invisible eyebrows.... Taken all in all, it was not a sexy face"), Merritt ultimately treats them so sympathetically that one cannot help liking them, with a tale that's compelling at every turn and surprisingly emotionally complex, Merritt has managed his own alchemy. (Jan.)