Velvet Elvis

Sonny Cantone is having a really bad day. He’s broke. His girlfriend left him. He drinks more than he should and smokes a lot of pot. And now some lunatic stole his car. As an ex-con with little experience in anything other than criminal enterprises and bad decisions, Sonny’s job prospects are not looking good, even in the middle of a blistering summer in the little Cape Cod tourist trap town he calls home. Worse still, he’s sleeping with a shady stripper that works as an informant for a dirty cop that hates him and has a penchant for extreme violence. So when Sonny’s partner in crime and stoner buddy Crash offers to bring him in on a caper that promises to yield some quick money, he has to listen. But nothing has prepared Sonny for the vortex of mayhem and madness he’s about to fall into.\nIn a cloud of marijuana smoke, he and Crash descend into the hot summer night, on the run from an array of crazed characters populating the darkest and seediest corners of Cape Cod after dark. And now, what seemed like an easy score turns instead into a surreal nightmare both horrific and darkly hilarious. Sonny just wants to get home, but it’ll take all night—this night—a crazy night that just keeps getting crazier, and one he’ll need to make right before things spiral so far out of control they’ll never get out alive.\nSonny Cantone is having a really bad day. Wait until he sees the next twenty-four hours.\nPraise for Books by Greg F. Gifune:\n“Dangerous Boys shows how great it is to be in the hands of a seasoned pro like Greg F. Gifune.” —James Grady, author of Six Days of the Condor\n“This quietly powerful short novel should bring much deserved attention to Gifune, who succeeds in imbuing what could have been a clichéd and formulaic noir premise with haunting emotional depth. Fans of understated, sophisticated crime fiction are in for a treat.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review for Saying Uncle\n“A perfect balance of hardboiled noir and occult horror, Greg F. Gifune’s Drago Descending is a real page-turner, genuinely frightening and emotionally devastating. This is a genre-bending tale of lost love and madness you won’t soon forget.” —Sandy DeLuca, author of Descent\n“Gifune is on my very short list of must-read authors. I wouldn’t miss anything he writes!” —Richard Chizmar, author of Chasing the Boogeyman