Nick
Santora --- a former lawyer who has
written for and/or produced several television series such as
“The Sopranos,” “Law & Order,”
“Prison Break” and “The Guardian” --- can
now add “novelist” to his impressive resume. His
debut introduces readers to Robert Principe, the son of a skilled
but humble Bensonhurst carpenter who worked to send him to law
school. Principe made it, not just to any law school but to
Columbia Law School. He graduated, passed the bar exam and set up
shop in the old neighborhood, full of grand plans to help the
downtrodden and get rich doing it.
 
A rising tide lifts all boats; first, however, one’s ship
must come in. Principe’s never makes it past the horizon,
even with the unconditional love of his father, who thinks he is
the greatest guy who ever walked the earth, and his wife. At the
point we meet Principe, his practice is slowly but surely failing.
He is robbing Peter, the mortgage company, to pay Paul, the law
office landlord. And his wife --- whom he positively adores --- has
just announced that she’s pregnant.
 
Santora sets things up beautifully here. Principe is a likable,
even an admirable, guy who --- at least initially --- isn’t
doing anything wrong; it’s just that he’s not doing
enough of the right things. Principe’s best friend Roland,
who is also an attorney (and an extremely successful one at that),
tries to give him advice, but Principe sloughs it off. However, he
still does not know what to do and is rapidly running out of
options.
 
Things turn around for Principe after a chance encounter with his
cousin, Jackie. Principe and Jackie, inseparable as children, chose
different career paths: Principe became an attorney, while Jackie
became a legbreaker for the local mob. These paths converge when
Principe concocts, on the spot, a scheme to solve his cash flow
problems and Jackie’s collection shortages. The fact that it
involves fraud weighs on Principe’s conscience, but by the
time he decides to back out, it’s too late; he is in the hole
and cannot stop shoveling.
 
Before too long, Principe is making more money, but his scheme is
unraveling --- and his business partners are not exactly the
understanding types. Principe has to make some quick and tough
choices, which make his old ones, such as who to pay and who to let
slide, seem like a piece of cake. And he must make those decisions
quickly, as he has people from both sides of the law after
him.
 
Santora, as one might expect from his work on “The
Sopranos,” has a masterful ability to capture the nuances ---
spoken and unspoken --- of relationships, and he does so
marvelously here as he presents a life falling apart in increments
during a quest to acquire what was in fact possessed all along.
Santora’s dark humor is also present, in buckets. If
you’re not laughing after every few pages of SLIP & FALL
and feeling somewhat guilty for it, then you’re not paying
attention. If you don’t see yourself in here among
Santora’s finely drawn characters, then you’re not
looking. This may well be the first great book of the summer.