Busted Flush

Ronald Charles Epstein is a Toronto-based freelance writer and published poet.

Southern Ontario author Brad Smith is an Arthur Ellis (Canadian mystery)
award nominee. All Hat, his previous novel, was nominated for the
Dashiel Hammett Prize and earned endorsement from such contemporary
giants as Richard Russo and Dennis Lehane. In Busted Flush, Smith
attempts to solidify his reputation by offering contemporary picaresque
populism.

This is not your typical boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-soul-to-girl,
boy-leaves-girl-to-save-his-integrity tale. True, the protagonist,
upstate New York carpenter Dock Bass, becomes a real-estate agent to
satisfy his ambitious wife. He then leaves her because he doubts her
integrity and discovers that his boss is using him to sell defective
houses. However, the real action begins when he discovers valuable
historical artifacts that he inherits on a farm in Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania, attracting various vultures.

Smith adds a post–9/11 edge to his satire of American excess. He
skewers the usual targets: crooked businessmen, shifty lawyers, and
celebrity journalists. Amy Morris, a leading TV personality,
investigates “America’s foremost ... lifestyle doyenne,” an
obvious reference to Martha Stewart. Former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom
Brokaw’s influence on a news story is debunked (“the anchorman’s
garbled baritone seemed to give it more weight than the others”).
David Letterman’s iconic status is confirmed because his joke about
Dock’s treasure marked the failed yuppie’s transformation to
unwilling celebrity.

The author is historically aware, but not always accurate. He states
that a Hungarian professor named Klaus Gabor “left Budapest in
1955,” although “[h]e fought in the revolution in ’56, and when it
failed, he came to the States.”

Busted Flush may appeal to readers with a voracious appetite for
satire.