Die Laughing: A Novel

Amazon.com Kindle: Die Laughing: A Novel
RM Krakoff
$3.99


Die Laughing!, 80,000 words, by R.M. Krakoff, is a black comedy tale revolving around stand-up comedian Alex Zachery and his uncanny knack for being in the wrong place at the worst of times. We follow Alex’s life as he begins his career of one-night stands as an amateur comic in Los Angeles clubs.

As he searches for love and a meaning to his life he constantly places himself in harm’s way, commits a murder or more, and runs from L.A. to the glitz of the 1960’s Las Vegas lounge acts where he winds up blundering his way into the New York mob.

This epic novel follows Alex’s life over sixty years as he changes identities (more than once), escapes police, the Mafia, the FBI before he finally (well, almost finally) winds up in a small town in Mississippi.

Throughout, Alex hones his craft of making people laugh while his life crumbles around him and family, friends and loves are lost forever. While Alex seeks a little fleeting normality in his life, unfathomable circumstances, not always within his control, generate havoc at every turn.

Alex struggles with his gift of comedy as a youth until his later life. He has never known anything else and is untrained for alternative careers. Alex longs for a more socially acceptable career and financial security that would vindicate him in his own eyes and redeem him from his father’s harsh predictions of failure. Despite his many setbacks and recurrent criminal activities he rises from his personal hell and creates an exemplary life of dubious fame and fortune.

How Alex gets his piece of nirvana is a rollicking toad’s ride of bizarre circumstances, twists and turns. Alex’s life is like watching a head-on collision of two passenger trains, where you know there will be devastating disaster but you can’t avert your eyes.