The Ringer

Description

Morton Martin Spell — a once-brilliant, now-infirm seventy-five-year-old writer — is sliding into delirium. He thinks Mount Sinai Hospital is an exclusive golf course and his catheter is a gym bag. His only link to reality is his thirty-five-year-old nephew, who makes his living as a hired gun for thirteen softball teams and still goes by the name College Boy.

But College Boy’s body has begun to betray him — almost as much as his lack of ambition. (His only legitimate paycheck comes from a gig as a laugher on a morning radio show.) Not only that, the Dirt King, a small-time gangster who controls all the replacement soil in Central Park, is after College Boy. As their lives collide, College Boy takes refuge in the arms of Sheila — his uncle’s cleaning woman and a part-time call girl.

And then it gets weird.

“Bill Scheft’s novel produces the kind of explosive laughs that can create an unsanitary condition.” “A moving story about love between wounded souls that will linger in the mind far longer than the laughs.” “Bill Scheft has written a delightful first novel….The Ringer is a funny, big-hearted book.” “Funny, insightful, and profound….I’m outraged.” “Damn funny, and ultimately moving. Four stars.” “Has to be the summer’s funniest novel….Fast moving fiction at its swiftest.” “Scheft keeps the material coming at machine-gun pace….the jokes are plentiful and very high in quality.”

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