The first thing that struck me about this book is the tone. It immediately brought to mind an old-time radio announcer—pitch-perfect for this fictionalized saga of Kid McCoy, a scrawny prizefighter from the late 1800s and early 1900s. These are pre-radio times, though, and the details of the time and place transport the reader from dreary small-town Indiana to backstreet St. Louis to the seediest areas of New York and beyond. The Kid's real name is Virgil Selby, but he takes the name McCoy from another boxer who dies from injuries incurred in a fight. The "new" McCoy is more colorful than Chang and Eng in Strauss's earlier book, as he's a flimflam artist on the side. (I love that word, and this book is full of others that evoke the era. I found myself singing "Mack the Knife" while reading it, because the setting was so tawdry—another good word.) In fact, the cons that he performs with his fat Chinese mentor, Johnnie Gold, are some of the most entertaining scenes in the book. The irony is that the term "the real McCoy" may have referred to Kid McCoy, but in the book his life is a complete sham; he's a liar and a bigamist and even obtains his welterweight title by scamming his opponent. Likeable he is not, but I couldn't help hoping that he would eventually straighten himself out so that he could hang on to his true love, Susan Fields. As in Chang and Eng, Strauss embellishes the lives of historical characters and leaves us wondering what's true and what's not. In this case, I think that very little is true, but who cares?
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