With the twists, turns, and smash-ups of a thriller, the sudden depths of a metaphysical novel, and the fizz of a screwball comedy, Street Legal is high entertainment and a righteously satisfying read, from the author of the greatest novel ever written about a saxophone-playing bear.

Street Legal features an old-time skunk dealer, sniffing the new breezes, wants to open an Old-Time Grass Business Theme Park with rides and a disco. His foot soldier, a strapping, confused kid who might be on the spectrum. A frustrated cop who isn't allowed to collar anyone important because the town needs the business who consoles himself by trying to make a last-chance bust and grab some of the action. A slick, unsettling stranger buying up properties under cover for a major tobacco company but really out for himself. A Tibetan Buddhist lama from New Jersey who sounds like Tony Soprano when discoursing on the dharma who finds his disciple, a wry, reticently sexy earth mother wracked with concern for the wayward young man who is her son.

“Elmore Leonard and the Dalai Lama walk into a bar …”

                                                            —Brian Cullman

 “Rafi Zabor's relentless honesty, humor and ability to tell a story make Street Legal a compelling read." 

—David Amram

“High and low, up and down, hilarious amidst the horror, universal and exquisitely specific, Rafi Zabor is back with a book that brings us the times, past, present and future.. Long may he run...”

—Tim Page

“The inimitable Rafi Zabor has again done something unusual: produce a page-turning thriller that’s also politically shrewd and spiritually conscious.  Street Legal is a picaresque pleasure with a very wise heart.”

                                                —Madison Smartt Bell

Praise for Rafi Zabor:

 “Inspired, often hilarious…”         —Times Literary Supplement

 “Equipped with staggering gifts for language and characterization…”  —Newsweek

 “As profoundly affecting as a great jazz solo…”  —Washington Post

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