The Wrecking Crew
by Hugo N. Gerst
g on for a wild ride! The craziest “coalition” in history is out to destroy ISIS!Forty years ago, Don Tommy Aiello was the most feared mafia leader in the United States. Each week, he counted the number of bodies he was responsible for killing. Each week, he counted the number of women he had slept with. But that was forty years ago. Today, he counts the number of pills he takes and the pennies left over from his small Social Security check so he might buy a cheap set of dentures – not covered by Medicare. Life is pretty awful. Twenty miles away, Pedro Sanchez, twenty, has already done two of his three strikes in prison. He can’t find a job. His seventeen-year-old girlfriend has just told him she’s pregnant. Life is pretty awful.Sister Maureen Richards is about to be dumped from her position as head of a prestigious private girls’ school. And FBI middle-manager Dennis O’Brien, 63, knows he’s on the way out the door. But he’s got an idea, which he shares with Ezra Caen, the hero of Gerstl’s Assassin. Five thousand miles away, a group of malcontents calling themselves the Islamic State (ISIS) is stirring up a worldwide bag of problems. Boots on the ground can’t stop them, aircraft in the air have no effect. The U.S. is spending $14 million a day and going nowhere.What if 15 “retired” Mafia Dons under the leadership of Sister Maureen are tasked with destroying ISIS? In exchange, their criminal records will be erased, and each will get $75,000 tax free a year for the rest of their lives. Their “army” will consist of young Hispanics who aren’t going anywhere except to the bottom … they’ll be given a four-year free college education and guaranteed government employment. Of course, the good, moral U.S. of A. can’t be seen to have a hand in this, so it will all be funded through La Società di Religione – the Vatican Bank.Hugo N. Gerstl, international bestselling author, steps into a wacky world that only his imagination could devise. Beneath the outrageous hilarity lies a much more serious message – how seniors we’ve put out to pasture, and those who are socially disadvantaged, become “invisible” in our world. As this splendidly entertaining novel makes clear, “Old age and treachery will defeat youth and vigor every time.” Published By Pangæa Publishing Group, 2019. 252 pages – 23 cm x 15 cm