About the Book
A gangster drama, NOTHING DRIES QUICKER THAN TEARS. Forty-year-old Norman Delmar ordered a bullet that killed his father. Not once, but twice. A counterfeit son. The string between mother and son broke like a kite.
In a Chaplin-esque satire about a casino robbery and the crime family involved, forty-year-old Norman Delmar didn't say, "I think I will kill my father, mother, wife, and brother today." The finicky Delmar is out to defend his Casino Agrippina in Monte Carlo and for whoever needs "the plunge," he hires a toaster, Batista, a silent killer.
The family, ranging from bullies, crooks, poker players, Madames, prostitutes and a mastermind, are all in on the conspiracy, yet each member is a humanist at heart - with a touch of Schadenfreude. Their weapons are only the telephone and a secret. The armed casino robbery wasn't meant to happen. It was poorly planned, amateurish and overly ambitious.
Madame Darlech, Delmar's mother, owns 'an establishment', a risqué dance-hall à la Toulouse-Lautrec; "Friends of yours?" "Yeah, bosom friends." Decadence is a dirty business that stinks of money. Madame also runs an orphanage filled with the bastards of this decadence. A fool, no doubt. Pleasure seeking that escalates to counterfeiting, crime chasing and a vision for her son's casino; her own Money; her own Empire; her own Nero. The old mafia lady Darlech is a real snake charmer, her son Delmar, a carpet seller on a camel.
After Delmar's estranged father Fernando Scottomaro tries to steal a casino deal, Batista buries his body under the pool of an old gym, a haunted hole, empty, and lifeless, under a mosaic of the Medusa, deep in the bottom. It's a bouillabaisse of intrigues, and now the thick glass floor of a restaurant sitting atop the face of the Medusa.
The poker player Santino Mezzomatto wins all bets for the house. Luck, you say, doll, Santino plays with marked cards. He creates his luck. Fakes come in. Then he loses all the games, real money runs out. Do you follow me? Madame Darlech needs a laundry service. But, Delmar finds out and pays the losses with the thieves' counterfeits. A melee ensues.
Armed robbers arrive but the alarm is triggered, foiling the plan. Delmar wants blood, "Shoot, shoot that man," he orders, taking aim at the leader attempting to flee the scene. The departed, Delmar later learns, is Nando Malamado, aka Scottomaro. The supernatural savvy of his father. Delmar knew who the man was all along. Death spun a tiresome repetition. The triumph is over the natural work of death. Delmar might never forgive his father. There is always hope. Nihil Lacrima Citius Arescit. (Nothing Dries Quicker Than Tears)
