One of America's hottest young writers - the only novelist named as one of Newsweek's '100 People for the New Century' - presents a genrebending, mind-blowing tale... .. Lionel Essrog, a.k.a. the Human Freakshow, is a victim of Tourette's syndrome (an uncontrollable urge to shout out nonsense, touch every surface in reach, rearrange objects). A local tough guy and fixer, Frank Minna, takes up the adolescent Lionel and three other orphans from St Vincent's Home for Boys and grooms them to become the Minna Men, a fly-by-night detective-agency-cum-limo-service - their days and nights revolving around Frank Minna, the secret prince of Brooklyn. Then one terrible day Frank is murdered, and Lionel must become a real detective, delving into the complex, and favours that make up Frank Minna's Brooklyn.