Product Description

Good Money After Bad follows the fluctuating fortunes of sports gambler Chance Skinner during the summer of 1995, while Chicago is experiencing its worst-ever heat wave. Chance, at 26, lives rent-free in his Gram's converted pantry overlooking Wrigley Field. He aspires to something vaguely like success, which includes respect, love, a kind of integrity and meaningful work. Gambling seems like a good shortcut to all that. When losses mount, Chance, desperate to maintain his good credit standing with bookies, submits himself as guinea pig to human medical studies. In this atmosphere of mounting danger, Chance meets his worst nightmare, the charming human parts broker Phase One Fenwick. Are the one-eyed Phase One and Chance really quite alike? Chance fears so, but hopes not. In a world in which there's a huge gap between self-image and reality, in which allies and enemies are nearly indistinguishable, where the house, as prophesized, looks unbeatable, and where even the biggest wins can be parlayed into something truly significant, Phase One offers Chance a last gasp hope for salvation--or ruin. With a cast of colorful characters that includes the City of Chicago itself, Good Money After Bad is a novel--that like its protagonist--skewers political correctness and revels in the ribald and ridiculous. Through Don Evans' deft prose and careful plotting, Chance Skinner joins a

pantheon of memorable Chicago literary characters, but also transcends geography to take his place alongside the likes of Kingsley Amis' Lord Jim and Joseph Heller's Yossarian. The publication of Evans' first novel Good Money After Bad promises to be an event, and the book itself, with its subtle interspersing of high drama and comic overtures, a distinguished addition to American letters.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #960053 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-28
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 216 pages

From Booklist
With a gambler named Chance as the protagonist in his roguishly witty debut novel, former Chicago Sun-Times sports reporter Evans places some high-stakes bets and comes out way ahead. Chance cuts quite a figure in his vintage fedoras and fancy duds, but luscious and brash Gwen isn't thrilled to discover that he shares his digs, an apartment within earshot of Wrigley Field, with his grandmother. Not that flashy, flask-packing Gram isn't good company. What Gwen doesn't know is that Chance is addicted to sports betting. With debts mounting, he gives his body to science, playing guinea pig for drug trials and sleep studies and getting tangled up with sinister one-eyed Fenwick, aka Phase One. Evans is a terrifically atmospheric writer, deftly evoking the world of bookies and compulsive gamblers, the tensions of gentrification, a surreally severe heat wave, and the consequences of secret desperation. Combining the blue-collar, neighborhood-anchored aesthetic Chicago writers are known for with a touch of suavely boozy noir, a sliver of medical-thriller action, and loads of charm, Evans tells a rascally and edgy cautionary tale. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author
Don Evans is a former sports reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times and Lombardian/Villa Park Review newspapers, where he also was an editor, photojournalist, general reporter, and humor columnist. The Illinois Press Association named Evans' "As Far As You Know" one of the best mid-sized newspaper columns in the state. Evans has also been honored for his short story writing --with a citation in Best American Short Stories' "100 Most Distinguished" and two Pushcart Prize nominations. He received fellowships to Syracuse University, where he earned an MFA under the mentorship of Tobias Wolff, and Saltonstall Foundation For The Arts. Evans has taught writing, literature and history at Syracuse University, Hamilton College (Cedar Rapids, Iowa), Friends World (London), and Westwood College (Chicago). He is a former serious gambler and part-time bookie, but gave that all up and currently is a stay- at-home dad who writes fiction in his son Dusty's sleeping hours.

Customer Reviews

Take a Chance on this Book
I'm not a gambler, at least not a gambler the likes of the hero in this book, but Mr. Evans makes the characters and the situations come to life. I felt the desperation of Chance and his gambling buddies. The description of the baseball games were eerily similar to the way I listen to a game that my wife is watching. The various plot lines converge on a riveting climax. The book is funny, sad, witty and clever. Buy it.

Addictive!
The first few pages of "Good Money After Bad" made me think that it would be an exercise in adjectives, flowery descriptions and word painting of places in Chicago. Very quickly though, the novel started to move faster and grip my attention. No more flowery descriptions, quick ideas being projected in my head showed me a world I was not aware of... that of sports gambling. I personally do not care for spectator sports and I was afraid that sports gambling would make no sense to me, however, the story is 99 percent about gambling as an addiction and only 1% sports. Unexpectedly, the nightmarish world of a black market for human organs entered the picture and it added a very sinister angle to the story, which read as a thriller from there on.
My only complaint is that I could not put it down even when my eyes were too tired to keep reading comfortably... this is a great story and I look forward to reading more novels by the same author.

Gamblers Never Win
Gamblers never win, in the long run, but it's the thrill of the race they are after, not necessarily the finish line. Don Evans has written a great book that shows the reader some of the inner workings of the rat race of the Chicago neighborhood gambling world. But it is also a book about trust, about who to trust, who can you trust and why and how do they deserve your respect. I enjoyed how the author walked you through the city and made it come alive on the page; not an easy task. Buy it, read it. ...Cuz I said so.