Schupack (The Boy on the Bus
) cleverly plays out in her latest what happens when you mix five sets of suburban New York neighbors with a suitcase full of cold cash. The large cast, while initially overwhelming, provides Schupack with bountiful opportunities for plots, counterplots, and all manner of nefarious doings as the neighbors decide what to do after finding a briefcase packed with $1 million in the new neighbors’ back yard during a pool party. The page-turning pace never flags among the “reproductively challenged” wealthy couple, the bachelor artist, the overburdened family of seven, the retired schoolteachers, and the seemingly happy new neighbors. Schupack also provides a startling peek into the lives of the immigrants who inhabit an entirely different part of New York than domestic Sylvan Street. Teeming with plot twists and social unrest, Schupack shows with poignant prose and commendable plotting the good, the bad, and the ugly that money brings out in people. (May)
