The Mortal Nuts

Seventy-three-year-old ex-poker player Axel Speeter has one more winner-take-all hand to play with a pair of crooks who are after the $260,000 he keeps squirreled away in his room at the Motel 6. A New York Times Book Review Notable Book for 1996.Amazon.com ReviewLusting for fame, fortune, heavy drugs, and good times, ex-con James Dean shows up at the Minnesota State Fair with his doped-up skinhead buddies and a gun. Alex Speeter saw the trouble coming, but didn't do anything to ward it off. He was too distracted by the Bueno Burrito on the menu at the fair's taco stand where he works, and the quarter of a million dollars in cash he stashed away in Folgers cans in his hotel room. But when the two collide more than sparks fly in this humorous crime tale. From Publishers WeeklyCarl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard fans who have yet to discover Hautman's wryly comic, warmly human characters and madcap plots are in for a treat. Septuagenarian Axel Speeter, former roving gambler, now star taco entrepreneur at the annual Minnesota State Fair, lives at the Motel 6 despite having squirreled away $260,000 in cold cash inside coffee cans. Bucking the doubts of two pals from his swashbuckling gambling days-auto mechanic and junkyard proprietor Sam O'Gara (returning from Hautman's Drawing Dead and Short Money) and pint-sized Tommy Fabian, the fair's mini-donut king-the sentimental but streetwise and ever-libidinous Axel sends for Carmen, the sexy daughter of his mistress and business manager. Carmen, a med-tech student in Omaha, may be wild and possessed of a larcenous heart, but Axel knows that she sells tacos like no one else. Following her to the fair this year, however, is her skinhead lover and drug-dealer, Valium-hooked ex-con James Dean, who plans to steal Axel's coffee cans and head for Baja. When he can't find Axel's cache, Dean's interest turns to the midget donut king and his stash of cash. Mayhem ensues, inevitably. This is about as offbeat as a comic crime novel can get, and entertaining enough to win Hautman a whole passel of new admirers. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.