Maniac Drifter

When Harper Martin drifts into a sleepy Cape Cod resort with a mysterious investment plan, he unleashes a firestorm involving the FBI, the State Department, the government of Nicaragua, and the J Paul Getty Museum. Laura Marello’s hilarious new novel features a surreal cast of characters, among them the Souza Family (Provincetown’s version of the Kennedys. They were handsome, glamorous, Catholic and doomed), Voodoo Woman, and a parrot named Sydney Greenstreet. We come to know them all – fishermen, artists, drug dealers, owners of bars both gay and straight – through the lens of a winsome young amnesiac whose own past is shrouded in mystery. Marello’s passion for art and film, seen in her earlier work, helps propel the action forward to its riotous conclusion; her love for the glorious foibles of our human nature, rendered with compassion as well as humor, keeps us caring about what happens. – Constance Solari, author of Sophie’s Fire