Bump and Run

Jack Molloy goes by the name of Jammer at the Vegas casino where he hosts muckamucks and sports stars for debauched evenings in Sin City. When arranging escorts (code word: nannies) for married men, he assures his clients of airtight evenings--safe from wives or pressure. Hookups happen in the deluxe penthouse, and Molloy orchestrates everything down to the last detail: "The only guys working the floor would be from my own Casino Host staff. Jammers in training, I called them. I'd also have alibis set up in advance, around the golf and the gambling and the fight, even a log I could produce if I had to."

The casino is called Amazing Grace, and Jack feels saved working there: his job is fantastically easy and he makes great money. But his brilliant career is cut short when his father dies. Dad was one of the richest men in the country, and owner of the New York Hawks football team. Although father and son have been estranged for years, ownership of the team is left to Jack in the will. So Jack leaves his role as Jammer and becomes an owner in the NFL.

Unsurprisingly, corruption in the NFL makes Vegas look like church. This is a world of serious lowlifes: crooked managers, players who know how to pass any drug test no matter how blotto they are, a prima donna quarterback with an endless rap sheet. Jack tries to navigate and watch his back, and when he's in need, he calls on his Vegas cronies. Mike Lupica (best known as a columnist for the New York Daily News) is a swift, funny, and eminently macho writer. Various characters in Bump and Run bring to mind Oliver Stone's Any Given Sunday. But where Stone makes football into a symbol of the American soul, Lupica--even as he indicts the surreal world of big sports business--never loses track of the fact that it's only an absurd, neck-breaking pageant. --Ellen Williams