Dirty 20 - by Bill Schweigart (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The Sopranos meets Dungeons & Dragons when a crime boss's son accidentally becomes a crowdfunding superstar and disrupts business on the streets.

Bill Schweigert (The Fatal Folklore Trilogy) game masters a crime fiction novel that will level up your crime game and make you finally get that THACO LIFE abs tattoo.

Despite being son to Don Allesandro Fugue, AKA Big Al, AKA The Al Mighty, AKA King of the Denver streets, Tommy Fugue has never had much interest in the family business. But when his father assigns him the "summer job" of mastering digital money laundering, Tommy figures he can list some fake projects on FunFunder, pledge them with zombie accounts, and clean a dirty $20,000 in time for college in the fall.

Unfortunately, just as he's about to give a progress report to his father's capos, the Family sees that a roleplaying game he mocked up using his mom's old artwork has been funded to the tune of $650,000... and counting.

The only thing scarier than an angry Big Al is a Big Al that smells money and family bonding. Voluntold by their mercurial boss to assist, various criminals and killers in the Family Fugue help playtest and produce Tommy's 1,000 Blades of Tergivers RPG in the hopes they can truly turn a dirty twenty into legit millions.

At first Tommy sees game sessions with brothel owners, hit women, and a street captain with OCD as yet another example of why he needs to get out from under his father. But when he realizes that being the game master might help him uncover what these criminals know about his mother's disappearance a year ago, it's Game On.

Playing a game while making a game is tricky--especially when elements of the fantasy world keep blending into the players' real lives. So when Tergivers' influence starts the streets talking about how the Family Fugue is slipping, beware the new game Big Al starts playing, following rules only he knows.

Review Quotes

Praise for Bill Schweigart's The Beast of Bancroft

"A vicious otherworldly creature terrorizes a neighborhood in Schweigart's swift and breezy suburban creature feature. . . . Readers who appreciate a B-movie sensibility, affable characters, and a sense of fun along with their scares will find much to enjoy." --Publishers Weekly

"The Beast of Barcroft is a page-turner, seizing the reader and demanding he keep his nose buried in the book until that last page is reached."--New York Journal of Books

"The action is fun, the pace is quick, and the imagery is great. I'd highly recommend this to anyone who loves a good afternoon horror story."--Scifi and Scary Book Reviews

About the Author

Bill Schweigart is the author of The Guilty One and "Women and Children First," a story co-written with James Patterson in Three Days to Live. He is also the author of The Fatal Folklore Trilogy, which includes The Beast of Barcroft, Northwoods, and The Devil's Colony. He is a former Coast Guard officer who drew from his experiences at sea to write the nautical thriller, Slipping the Cable and the romantic comedy, Running Light. Bill currently lives in Arlington, VA with his family, who along with their monstrous Newfoundland and too many cats, provide him with all the adventure he can handle.