When Hazman gets involved with Osgood and his wife Oona, who are bank-rolling Osgood's bid for the presidency with profits from Oona's cocaine business, the result is a black comedy in which Reagan, Thatcher and the Prizzis have a role to play. The author wrote "Prizzi" and "Emperor of America".
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Even the bare bones of a Condon novel ( Prizzi's Honor ) are baroque. Hot dog firm sales manager Owney Hazman, 28, has been pining for his mother since she left him when he was nine. Little does he know that his missing mom is his acquaintance Oona Noon, who has a thick Gullah accent and a wimpy GOP presidential contender husband, Osgood. Oona finances Osgood's campaign with profits from her cocaine-smuggling business, recruiting the unsuspecting Owney to act as her go-between--and making him the target of vicious spies from 10 countries. Owney discovers her true identity only after one of her supertankers spills its cargo of coke. Ballast, claims Oona as the plot really starts to spin. The end may seem to be a large shaggy dog but Condon's satirical eye is as wickedly sharp as ever. There are laughs galore, and at least one per page will be bitter. $60,000 ad/promo.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Kirkus Reviews
Politics and cocaine spinalize Condon's latest black comedy, a strong improvement over his Emperor of America (1989). Many old friends from Condon's earlier works return here, including the Prizzis of Brooklyn and Wambly Keifetz, the head of Bahama Beaver Bonnet Co., who keeps all the Prizzi zillions in a vault in his cellar. But the hero is handsome, vacuous Owney Hazman, a former vendor of novelty cigarette lighters who has struck it nice by marrying into the frankfurter business and becoming top salesman for his wife Dolly's father. Owney, though, is haunted by his mother's having deserted him at age nine and leaving him with his sick father. Twenty years later his mother (``Her eyes were like Delft dinner plates on a snowfield'') discovers him at a racetrack and recognizes him instantly as her son. She's now Oona Noon, who's inherited her late husband's 72 oil tankers that were used to haul cocaine for the Medell¡n/Prizzi combo, has billions (tax-free) laundered away in Prizzi's banks, and now wants to sell her supertankers to the Chinese to finance her new idiot husband's run for the presidency. She hires Owney, who still doesn't know she's the mother he's been seeking, to be her well-paid messenger boy. But Owney's singing wife Dolly suddenly has a hit record, is making $43 million a year, and he's vastly embarrassed to be making less. When Oona sells her tankers to the Prizzis, not to the Chinese, her world momentarily collapses and Owney winds up with $4.3 billion in tax-free bearer bonds. Then Oona wants Owney to be her husband's vice-president, and Condon has a joyride with the candidates' duplicities with a stupefied public. A richly memorable high point is Dolly's climactic meeting with Oona (who is wearing a demure chinchilla body stocking), and the two women's comparisons of the world's wealthiest ladies' restrooms. Mind-boggling detail for skulduggery, and great fun. The ``final addiction'' is to the public's stupidity. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I guffaw about the government ; you get 5 stars.,
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This review is from: The Final Addiction (Hardcover)
It's funny. It's smart. It's hard to grasp at the start but the plot tightens up after the first 50 pages. It's got a senile bent making its characters operatic. I've learned to appreciate this kind of thing. It drops the right phrase in their mouths with comic timing. It lampoons the Reagan administration by someone with the age and credits to do a proper job of it. Fifty pages left; see you.
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