LAST CALL - jd Seamus

Nathan Melton is a former football player turned e-commerce entrepreneur. He's moved to New York City and is looking for a place to meet people. After several failed attempts he finds himself in the middle of an ATM heist that ultimately leads him to Jimmie's.

The proprietor of Jimmie's is Jimmie Collins, an Irish immigrant who, in addition to running the bar, "finds" and sells things that happen to fall off the back of trucks. He also collects toys and plays Santa Claus to underprivileged children each year. All the patrons at Jimmie's love Jimmie: the mobsters, the bookies, the cops, and now Nathan Melton.

Jimmie's wife is in the late stages of MS and his daughter is mentally retarded; they live together in a nice retirement community in Florida where they can be well cared for. So, when Jimmie learns he has cancer, he works to collect all the money he's stashed in off-shore accounts (from his various occupational pursuits) and set it up in a trust to take care of his family. However, after Jimmie passes away, the money vanishes; the bills aren't being paid and Nathan is contacted by the retirement community.

Jimmie's loyal patrons band together in an effort to find and return Jimmie's money before his family loses the roof over their heads.

The mystery aspect of LAST CALL doesn't come into play until about 2/3 of the way through the novel. The first part of the book is more of the daily routine of the various patrons of Jimmie's bar: couples meeting, the cops on stakeouts, a couple of the mob guys going to jail, etc. This made me think of CHEERS with a bit of THE SOPRANOS mixed in. With the frequent, detailed sex scenes, if LAST CALL were a television show, it would need to be aired on a
deluxe cable station.

LAST CALL doesn't have the drama of a SOPRANOS, however. Instead it has more of the qualities of a comedy like NAKED GUN. Once the mystery kicks into high gear, a comedy of errors commences.

While the majority of the novel revolved around the more far-fetched plot events, Seamus mixes in a rather interesting theme. New York is filled with fancy clubs and highfalutin restaurants, but Jimmie's is a stereo-typical bar filled with stereo-typical bar patrons: they're rough and tough and crass, etc. But when Jimmie is facing his imminent death, the rough-tough ex-football player, Nathan, ponders the macho requirement that men can't express the emotions they really feel. They have to be restrained and hidden, as if they don't exist. This also comes through when Nathan's girlfriend Terri grows angry with him for never being serious, always joking. LAST CALL is kind of like that male character. It's always a joke, but underneath, hidden and restrained, is the emotion that isn't supposed to be revealed.

jd Seamus is presently on tour with Pump Up Your Book Promotion Virtual Book Tours. You can learn more about jd and LAST CALL at his website.

LAST CALL (ISBN: 978-0-9802256-0-0) is being released by Capital Press in September.