β Scribed by Rotter, Jeffrey
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Jim Rath has an unusual set of ambitions: My goal was a thorough understanding of water, he says. But not on a chemical level. Not in any way you could test.... I wanted to know why the water is always calling to us, what it wants to tell us. In this ambling adventure, he attempts to find out. Combining Rath's story (including the predictable dissolution of his marriage) with that of Homeland Security agent Les Diaz, Rotter, in his first novel, weaves a semisuspenseful tale of (possible) international terrorism and, uh, water parks. Parading from a Colorado Springs, Colo., Hilton all the way to the Prospector's Bend theme park outside of Denver, Rath and Diaz engage in a battle of something like wits; Diaz thinks Rath is a jihadist, while Rathβat best a dreamer, at worst a psychopathβthinks Diaz is a merman from an imaginary underwater city. While Rotter makes a solid effort, the fantasy element of the book remains half-baked and, despite the timely and biting humor throughout, the thrill of the goofy 320-page chase isn't quite enough. (Mar.)
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βPerceptive and humorous? Goes beyond the obvious sendup to explore the private and at times desperate ways his characters strive to secure their own homeland? Rotter's imagination is formidable and fresh."
β Joseph Salvatore, New York Times Book Review
βRiotous-yet-highly controlled? Rotter [has] imaginative verve and eye for absurdity -- personal, literary and political.β
β Kerry Fried, Newsday
"Absurdly hilarious... So smart about paranoia, so freshly observed, I feared the era of Rumsfeld had returned."
β Gary Shteyngart, author of Absurdistan and The Russian Debutante's Handbook
π SIMILAR VOLUMES
Jim Rath's wife has grown tired of his hobbies: his immaculately maintained comics collection, his creepy underwater experiments, and his dreams of building a museum based on the Aquatic Ape Theory of Human Evolution. On the night that she leaves him, Jim thinks he has spotted an emissary from a los
### Review ''I would heartily recommend it. I don't think anybody could go buy a book written by anybody who has been more intimately involved, closer to power, for as many years, has been through as much, has known all of the power players as you have. It is amazing.'' -Rush Limbaugh (interview