Slow Toast Press

There’s something fishy going on in the backwater town of Wanaduck, Washington, population 879, er, 878. Make that 850.

Anthony “Juice” Verrone, former Mafia enforcer and guest of the Witness Security Program, is trying to hide from the Family he sent up the river. When a giant hot dog, a fiberglass bass, and a plummeting corpse put the squeeze on Juice, he thinks he’s been found out. Juice teams up with Rudy Touchous, a forensic accountant, and Police Chief Dickie Gordon, to track down the killer. Instead, they run head-on into a public utility in desperate financial straits, a local troop of NASCAR-addled, bass-fishing rednecks with odd literary aspirations, and a vegetarian commune, which, in its dedication to the well-being of plants, is tossing more than lettuce into its salad bar. And what is that secret ingredient in their all-vegetarian hotdogs? The Utility’s plans leak, so they bring in a strange parade of hired guns to make sure the people who know too much can’t say anything.

When these players mix it up at the Asparagus Festival a conflagration ignites that changes everything. Can Juice go back to being a regular guy? Or does he find out that he can hide, but he can’t just disappear?