{"product_id":"9780692270738","title":"A Hoarse Half-Human Cheer","description":"A medieval schoolmaster whose students stabbed him to death with their pens---his name lives on in the College of Saint Cassian of Imola, a school with spectacular troubles. World War II has ended, and overnight Saint Cash's has recklessly expanded from a dozen students to 4,500. Unknown to the honest clerics who think they run the place, the Newark Mafia find the college a handy front for dealing in war surplus materials. It's a tough scene for a green kid like apprentice mortician Moon Gogarty, even tougher for basketball coach Douglas Knox, a priest with a drinking problem who receives mysterious threats on his life. And both Knox and Moon face a powerful temptation: mobster mistress Aisling Vastasi.\u003cp\u003eIn this sinister comedy, the mob blackmails a pedophile priest in order to take over his lucrative charity, The Children's Crusade. Events follow fast: a car-bombing, a fiery holocaust, an exorcism that ends in terror, a raid on a brothel, a college commencement that turns into a shoot-out, a play-off basketball game in which rival gamblers have bribed both teams.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAlternately blood-curdling and hilarious, this is a gripping story full of sudden twists. Devotees of the thrillers of Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiassen, and Janet Evanovich will find A Hoarse Half-human Cheer in the same league\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Curtis Brown Unlimited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49815755882736,"sku":"9780692270738","price":15.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780692270738","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}