7,000 Clams

January 10, 2005
Set during the Roaring '20, Irby's frenzied debut chases a good-natured criminal and a baseball icon up and down the eastern seaboard. Bootlegger Frank Hearne faces trouble in Asbury Park, N.J.: an old colleague turned legit (on the face of it, anyway) for the Prohibition Bureau makes off with a pricey cache of smuggled Canadian scotch. Desperate, Frank steals a tattered $7,000 IOU penned by the one and only Babe Ruth and sets off with voluptuous, gun-toting model/lounge singer Ginger DeMore to spring training in St. Petersburg, Fla., to cash in. Frank and Ginger, both on everyone's most-wanted list, are tailed by a gang of mobsters and also by Irene Howard, an obsessed, lovesick college student Frank spent the summer romancing. While Ginger's flirtations fail to keep the Mafioso off her tail, beady-eyed jewel thief Ellis Wax bamboozles his way into Irene's already unstable life and eventually worms his way into Frank's business as well. Babe's IOU is actually a gambling debt owed to a underworld boss, and before it makes front-page news, everyone from crooked cops to rabid henchmen rush to Derby Lanes dog track to chase down the Bambino. A botched scheme to kidnap Irene pits Frank against Ellis as bullets fly and female hearts flutter. Though overzealous in scope, Irby's writing is brisk and the distinctive characterizations are vivid enough to keep readers engrossed. Agent, Nat Sobel.

Starred review from February 15, 2005
Florida in the 1920s is a world of con men, bootleggers, speculators, hot deals, and fast bucks; and the action kicks up a notch beyond frantic when the New York Yankees move into St. Petersburg for spring training. In Irby's first novel, Frank Hearn, a down-and-out rumrunner from New Jersey, follows Babe Ruth to St. Petersburg to collect on a stolen $7000 IOU. He also brings along sexy nightclub singer Ginger DeMore, a potential witness against mobster Al Capone in a recent murder case. Factor in Frank's wronged New Jersey colleagues, his former girlfriend, Capone's hit men, and a murderer whom they pick up along the way, and the stage is set for mayhem. Irby proves himself a master wordsmith as he throws all elements into an already teeming pot and waits for it to boil. With a style that emulates James Carlos Blake's use of historical characters and events and Elmore Leonard's wicked sense of humor and retribution, Irby has hit a home run his first time at bat. Move over, guys; make room for the new kid. Recommended. -Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2005
This jaunty Jazz Age jape takes readers on a greatest-hits tour of the Roaring Twenties in a crime story involving noble bootleggers, flighty flappers, crooked cops, alcoholic sportswriters, crusading prosecutors, trigger-happy hit men, aspiring torch singers--and Babe Ruth and Al Capone. The rollicking story rolls from the Jersey shore down to a Florida awash in real-estate speculators and then up to a gangster-infested Chicago. It all starts when a Jersey crime boss hijacks a load of Canadian Scotch from Frank Hearn. The likable roue is not so fresh from a night of passion with Ginger DeMore, a beautiful chanteuse on the lam from Chicago after witnessing a Capone murder. Frank and Ginger head for more trouble at the Yankees' spring training camp in Florida when he finds a $7,000 gambling IOU signed by the Bambino himself. None of this rings especially true, and the plot hinges on several outlandish coincidences. But Irby re-creates the era with sly style. And although his Ruth seemingly owes a big debt to John Goodman's biopic performance, the larger-than-life slugger easily steals every scene he's in.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)