LAST ACTS

This darkly comic debut tells of how a father and son try to cope with misfortune.

David Rizzo is almost 60 when his 30-year-old son, Nick, ODs, flatlines, and then is revived. Driving to the hospital makes the father miss an appointment to sell his struggling gun store, which is located in a low-traffic “commercial wasteland” in Phoenix, Arizona. His car is towed because he parked in a space reserved for medical staff. His credit card is declined at the rehab where he planned to leave Nick. Such is life for the hapless Rizzo, whose chief pleasure is TV, especially the ads. But wait! There’s more! Business actually improves at the gun shop after Nick makes an ad offering to donate a portion of every sale to a local rehab center. Then Rizzo sells an assault rifle to a young man who subsequently fires 200 rounds in a local high school. He doesn’t kill or injure anyone, but since he was underage, Rizzo goes to prison. He also largely disappears from the book. Nick shows he’s his father’s son through a string of bad business and personal decisions, such as partnering with a local entrepreneur who mixes poor judgment and fraud and leaving a former junkie pal in charge of the gun store. Sammartino takes clever shots at marketing, philanthropy, business ethics, and gun violence—although it’s risky to exploit school shootings, even in black comedy. It’s also questionable to sideline Rizzo after he’s been the narrative’s focus and most developed character for 100 pages. But in this ode to losers, one could do worse than relying on Nick, whose main traits are inadequacy and remorse. Sammartino does have a knack for edgy writing, and occasionally he pauses to observe the world in well-crafted patches of staccato, propulsive prose.

An uneven first outing but brimming with promise.