IN THE EARLY 1970S, Poe--a quick-witted young juggler from rural Massachusetts--abandons the talent shows of his childhood in favor of a nomadic life. He hops trains, hitchhikes, lives on the streets, sleeps rough, and juggles to feed himself. A few years before, he would have been a hobo; a few decades later, he would have been homeless; but in 1973, he is just a street-juggling hippie.
After roaming the country for a few years, Poe settles in Philadelphia and masters his street act before ever-growing crowds. In time, he runs all the busking around South Street like the don of a street-performing mafia. But his talent at manipulating crowds attracts the attention of a criminal organization who convince him to provide a diversion during a bank heist for a payday far greater than the coins he collects in his hat. Things go south, an innocent bystander is killed, and this peace-love talking hippie is now a felony murderer.
He splits town and goes into hiding, but he can't resist the lure of the crowd, and resurfaces under a pseudonym in Hibbing, Minnesota, drawing large crowds as a regular performer at a Renaissance Fair(e). Unfortunately, his notoriety outs him to the criminal organization who believes he took something of importance from them during the heist. Using all of the wit and misdirection that has made him the best street performer anyone has ever seen, Poe must outsmart and outmaneuver them in order to return to the peaceful life of juggling.
Felony Juggler is an accurate depiction of the streets and street performing in the 1970s, told with the excursive and a-little-too-honest style of Penn Jillette--who was, just coincidently, in his own words, a street juggler and carny trash in the 1970s. Like his previous novel Random, Jillette's intellectual curiosity, twisting morality, and honed stagecraft fuel a madcap narrative brimming with his renowned humor.
