Budding Prospects Author:T. C. Boyle At 31, Felix Nasmith is a lifelong loser, but finally he gets his chance to shine when he and a couple of particularly manic friends (who include an ex-CIA agent who is now a gourmet cook) come up with a scheme to get rich quick by growing marijuana. Determined to harvest a half-million-dollar crop over the course of a summer, they get involved ... more »in a variety of nightmarish and/or comic events before their eventual downfall. T. C. Boyle's second novel is a kind of ironic pastoral, from which his hero emerges no richer but perhaps with a gain in wisdom.« less