โ Scribed by David Liss
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Liss (_A Conspiracy of Paper_) recycles familiar conventionsdrug dealers, missing money, an innocent hero mixed up with bad guysbut salvages his novel from banality with a few quirky touches. In sticky south Florida of August 1985, Lem Altick, a 17-year-old door-to-door encyclopedia salesman, witnesses the murder of two potential customers in a mobile home. Fearing he'll be fingered for the crimeor worse, that he's nextLem establishes a wary relationship with the likable killer, Melford Kean, who is either a violent psychopath or an animal rights vigilante fighting agribusiness. Lem must also watch out for Jim Doe, the corrupt, redneck police chief who saw Lem at the trailer on the night of the crimes. Lem's paranoia heightens when he learns of Doe's connection to his employers at the encyclopedia sales company, which turns out to be a front. While Lem repeatedly skitters away from danger as he gathers clues that reveal a web of corruption, he finds time to fall for fellow bookseller Chitra and to undergo a political awakening under Melford's tutelage. Liss provides enough entertainment to keep the pages turning, but this hybrid of a thriller and a coming-of-age story doesn't quite succeed as either. (Mar.)
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Readers expecting another historical thriller from Liss in the manner of A Conspiracy of Paper (2000) and The Coffee Trader (2003) are in for quite a surprise. Moving from Arturo Perez-Reverte territory to the very different world of Carl Hiaasen, Liss delivers a contemporary ecoterrorist romp shot through with elements of the absurd. It begins with a 17-year-old Jewish encyclopedia salesman working door to door in a South Florida trailer park (Is the absurdist angle apparent yet?). Lem Altick is saving money for college by tricking poor people into buying supermarket encyclopedias, but he gets more than he bargained for when an assassin with "Warholishy" hair saunters into a trailer where Lem is about to close a deal and efficiently kills the two would-be encyclopedia readers and then engages Lem in a chat about his favorite Shakespeare play (Lem is partial to Twelfth Night). It only gets weirder from there, as Lem finds himself a sort of comrade-in-arms with the ethical assassin, whose real purpose seems to be raising havoc with some distinctly unethical pig farmers. There's also a sicko small-town sheriff lurking in the wings, having apparently wandered into the action straight out of Jim Thompson's Pop. 1280. The jump from financial chicanery in seventeenth-century London to redneck craziness, South Florida style, seems daunting, but Liss sails across the abyss unscathed. Be careful to whom you recommend this: the Perez-Reverte crowd may not be amused, but Hiaasen's homeboys will feel right at home down in the muck with a gang of evildoing pig farmers. Bill Ott
Copyright American Library Association. All rights reserved
A Novel
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