Word: philadelphia
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Milwaukee 113, Philadelphia...
Washington 4, Philadelphia...
...after her first husband's death would simply let something fall on his head. Mickey, her current spouse, cannot disagree; he feels unworthy of Jeanie, probably with cause. He drives a refrigerated truck and sells stolen meat at the behest of his boss, a remote functionary of the Philadelphia Mob. Mickey finds himself obliged to soothe his wife's pain in two ways: by coming up with the $6,000 or so it will take for a mahogany coffin and a dignified funeral and by begging his underworld connections to find out just how Leon happened...
Lucky for Mickey that he owns a meat truck. Unfortunately for Mickey, Richard Shellburn, Philadelphia's most beloved columnist, peers through his alcoholic fog long enough to become aware of the un sung death of Leon Hubbard, interviews the grieving mother and falls in love with her. As Mickey's luck careers downhill, he reflects on the source of his troubles: "Alive, Leon was a pain in the ass; dead, he was killing...
Author Dexter, a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, piles on more complications and coincidences than his novel ought to carry. What saves God's Pocket from flighty sensationalism is its impressive ballast of local color. The fictional neighborhood named in the title is a white, working-class enclave in South Philadelphia that seems all too real: narrow houses, streets, lives; a place where the Hollywood Bar, the social hub of the area, does "half its business before noon." Some of the novel's best times are spent at the Hollywood. Mickey hears a drunken woman praise...