Cheapskates — Charles Stella

Reese Waters is headstrong, principled, and a bit naive. The former bus driver and now ex-con merely wants to do the right thing by prison buddy Peter Rizzo. He just doesn’t expect the right thing to entail $50,000 in cash, a funeral, the mean-spirited schemes of Rizzo’s congenitally greedy ex-wife, confrontations with Mafia consigliere Jimmy Valentine, two hit men, a Nation of Islam splinter group, and the homicide investigation of two New York police detectives. Reese is barely a day out of Fishkill Penitentiary before his world is spinning crazily out of control because everybody’s after the money, which is all at once a divorce settlement, an unhonored debt, a ransom demand, a shakedown, a killer’s fee, and a mere fifty g’s. With dynamite dialogue, high-octane action, and hardboiled humor, what author Charlie Stella’s cheapskates will do for the money gets as wild as the ride of a runaway bus loose on Second Avenue.