About Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die!
The Nic Sacco and Bart Vanzetti of Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die! are not exactly the infamous anarchists sentenced to death by the United States government. Instead, in this hilarious first novel, they are film stars, slapstick comedians — and this is the story of their rise to fame, from a seedy New York vaudeville club (where they introduce their famous knife-throwing gag) to movies and USO tours (where they open, with disastrous results, for Bob Hope). We see them choosing their roles: one will be fat, the other skinny; one will be contemplative, the other impulsive. But as their careers decline amid controversy and as the characters grow out of their on-screen roles, slapstick becomes a stand-in for anarchic freedom, and the fictional Sacco and Vanzetti begin to merge with their namesakes. In the process, we're treated to a rollicking — and finally bittersweet — alternate history of the twentieth century, where liberty is always just a little bit out of reach.
"Telling lies about Sacco and Vanzetti was formerly the provenance of the United States government. Now, radically innovative debut novelist Mark Binelli tries his hand at it, deepening the mystery, and mythology, around these legendary subversives, and producing a novel unlike anything I've read before. A brilliant, hilarious book that proves how relevant the imagination is to the necessary reckoning we make with history."
— Ben Marcus