Tales of the Savoy: Stories from a Glasgow Cafe

Glasgow's gray and grimy slum Cowcaddens yields a great deal of local color in the 23 linked stories of retired cafe owner Pieri's lightly amusing, fictionalized memoirs, which draw upon 30 years of lowlife lore. Hard men, housebreakers, fly men, chucker-outs, polis, hooks, neds and other patrons of the Savoy Cafe, the Pieri family's real, well-known fish and chips shop, populate these sketches and vignettes. There's Johnny, the bookie's runner, who one night gets a knife in the back of his ""heid""; Tosh, the burglar who robs a black market ice-cream parlor; Fabio, who runs a black market currency exchange; Big Steve, a legendary bouncer; and, of course, Savoy owner Mario Petri, stand-in for Joe Pieri. A longtime member of Glasgow's immigrant Italian community, Pieri also has tales of settling into the new country, and he addresses the additional problems faced by Italian Glaswegians in WWII. Many of the better stories take place during the war, notably one describing how the Savoy used preconsecrated holy oil to fry its fish suppers during rationing, and another telling how Jimmy the bookie made--and lost--a fortune running a gambling ring during the Italian campaign. Although Pieri's (Isle of the Displaced) prose may be salted with conversational clich s, his nostalgia-seasoned anecdotal stories go down one after another like well-vinegared chips. (June)