Meyer

Meyer Lansky, the real-life mobster and crabby octogenarian, plots his escape from a seedy Miami nursing home to sanctuary in Israel in this weird and wild crime novel. He’s held up by certain needed “papers,” which are on a plane that was carrying cocaine and sunk near the Florida Keys. While manipulating young David Greene, his care home’s Cuban ex-con janitor, Meyer’s pursued by Aldo, a crooked home manager. Their trails crash up against modern mobster Milena, head of the Miami cartels, and her Godfather-obsessed gunman Pablo, who is chasing the underwater cocaine. Bodies are dumped into trunks, cars are torched, Hawaiian shirts are worn, and blood is sprayed everywhere right through the vicious final-act showdown on a fishing boat. It’s woven with nostalgia, and a lament on loss and aging. Dynamic art by Mutti (Fearscape) highlights the play-for-keeps action with realistic figure work reminiscent of Guy Davis, with striking use of shadows and silhouettes. It’s a thrilling, funny, and touching alternate history that posits a happy ending—Lansky’s escape to Israel. In actuality, Meyer died of lung cancer in the states in 1983. But, as gangsters so often become figures of folktale, Lang and Mutti’s romp takes inspiration from the Maxwell Scott quote, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” [em](Sept.) [/em]