The time: an entire night in Montreal. The place: a narrow alley where two stubborn drivers come to a preposterous impasse. The cast: a marvelous blend of misfits—Pelzic, the immigrant cabdriver whose ambition is to pull a retzic (bonanza) by throwing himself against moving vehicles and thereby milking some insurance company; Levin, the real estate fat cat whose tenants are pinpricking him mad with inane complaints; a tipsy millionaire; and a girl or two. The book: Shmucks, a brutally sardonic, brilliantly funny novel of confrontation and alienation.

Snappy dialogue and a plot full of twists and turns blend to make an adventure story with the unlikeliest hero—and the unlikeliest villains!The Last Collection takes the reader into the peculiar side of modern-day Montreal, a big city filled with colorful people such as Solly the Hawk Weisskopf and Big Moishie Mandelberg, loan sharks whose collection methods rely more on ingenuity (such as before-and-after pictures of their victims) than violence; and Artie Kerner, their "mark," whose rare addiction to purchasing expensive but worthless items finally leads him to seek professional help from Dr. Lehman, a psychiatrist only slightly more neurotic than his patients—practicing in an office that resembles a South Sea island, complete with lagoon.The result is a fast-paced satire with an unconventional humor that binds the book from beginning to unmatchable end.