Holy Smoke
By (Author) Adriana Hunter
By (author) Tonino Benacquista
Bitter Lemon Press
Bitter Lemon Press
26th February 2004
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
843.914
Paperback
200
Some favours simply cannot be refused. Tonio agrees to write a love letter for Dario, a low-rent Paris gigolo. When Dario is murdered, a single bullet to the head, Tonio finds his friend has left him a small vineyard somewhere east of Naples. The wine is undrinkable but an elaborate scam has been set up. The smell of easy money attracts the unwanted attentions of the Mafia and the Vatican, and the unbridled hatred of the locals. Mafiosi aren't choir boys, and monsignors can be very much like Mafiosi. A darkly comic, iconoclastic tale.
Benacquista, born in France of Italian immigrants, dropped out of film studies to finance his writing career. After being a museum night watchman, a train guard and a parasite on the Paris gallery opening and cocktail circuit, he is now a successful author and screenwriter. Her work includes Catherine Millet's explicit autobiography, 'The sexual life of Catherine M' and Beigbeder's attack novel on advertising, '9.99'.She also translated 'Death in the Dordogne' by Louis Sanders recently favourably reviewed by the NYT.