When inveterate practical jokester and world class chef Charlie Dunston discovers a large and exquisite diamond in a most unexpected place, this sets off a series of comic episodes which finds Charlie and his four-legged companion, the intrepid canine Ruffolio, along with various friends and relations, running half-way across the country with mob-hired assassins in hot pursuit. In this farcical thriller, novelist Greg Nyquist set out to write the funniest novel of the age. "I wrote Normal Madness," insists its author, "largely to make war against the muscles of the diaphragm (and any and all other muscles that might be implicated in the physical act of laughter)." The result is a book rich in wildly imaginative comic incidents, hilarious and unforgettable, embedded in the fabric of a fast paced plot.