In Alexander Sammartino’s Last Acts, a father and son donate a portion of their struggling gun business’s profits to the war against drugs, thus becoming the first ammunition store in America dedicated to “shooting addiction dead”. This is a tale about losers; Rizzo is addicted to television and his son Nick to heroin, and even the school shooting – inevitable in this story – kills no one. The novel manoeuvres through opioids, the working class and masculinity, topics twitchy enough to make anyone ignite. Exhilaratingly, it elicits belly laughs and pathos, and is astute in a manner that, while cynical, is never cruel.
Rizzo’s Firearms is located off the 101 in…