Basement

Greenburg was like a lot of northeastern towns. It was bankrupt, ugly and filled with ignorant people. The healthy ones fled and the maimed, in-bred and elderly stayed behind. Businesses failed. Job lot stores, secondhand shops and filthy, dimly lit restaurants did their best to extract nickels and dimes from the populace. If a newspaper was blowing and tumbling down Main Street in a humid wind, it was more often than not the National Enquirer.

But Greenburg had something that other more successful towns didn’t: a preponderance of basements with high ceilings.

The Jones’ have a prisoner in their basement.

So do the Smiths.

Times are tough. When a working class town in the northeast gets their fill of foreclosures and seizures, they turn to an experimental program that promises to put cash in their pockets: Housing non-violent offenders in portable jail cells in citizens’ basements.

Sounds like a great idea.

Sex is rampant. Racism is off the charts. Every misstep is compounded by sociopathic Mayor Bob, who makes sure every family gets the prisoner that can do the most damage to the family bosom.

On the outskirts is Coleman, a lonely man who is fuming because his house is a summer bungalow without a basement. It’s an election year and Coleman goes up against Mayor Bob, against an imprisoned background of lust, alky blues, imminent suicide and degenerate optimism.

Let the games begin.

A reader said BASEMENT unspools like, “… a combination of Elmore Leonard and The Simpsons.’