Zero Hits, Zero Errors, Zero Runs: The Zero Game
Amazon says:
Banes & Noble thinks:
|
Author: Brad Meltzer
Title: The Zero Game Genre: If you ask me, there are already too many games being played in Washington, DC, these days; but there just might be another one going on right under our noses… Best buds Matthew Mercer and Harris Sandler are hip-deep in The Zero Game, which they’re playing against a field of players about which they know absolutely nothing: not who, not what positions, not how many players, nothing. The object of the game changes every round – getting a U S Senator to say “dry cleaning” on the Senate floor… causing the “nays” on a sure-to-pass House bill to eclipse the century mark… getting a silly giveaway of some worthless, played-out gold mine into the COBRA bill… But when that last one comes down the pike, all hell breaks loose for some unknown reason – and the first sign that this are seriously wrong is when poor Matthew ends up one of the drawers at the DC morgue. In mortal fear, Harris turns first to his old mentor and then to his most powerful friend – a Deputy Attorney General – in an attempt to report that Matthew’s death was not the random violence it appears. Nope, no luck there: in fact, he's even more scared by their reactions. Pegging his suspicions on the other players in what he had thought was an innocent game, Harris shanghais one of the few remaining Washington innocents – a seventeen-year-old African-American Senate page, Viv Parker – into helping him find out how a simple gold-mine giveaway could be important enough to lead to multiple murders and a shadowy fiend named Janos on his own trail. The pair’s search leads them through the hidden corridors of the US Capitol complex and 8000 feet deep in the Black Hills of South Dakota, as Harris and Viv stay only a step ahead of the relentless, near-indestructible Janos. At every turn, the pair are met with murder, mayhem, and betrayal. But that last is the game most often played in DC, after all… More Meltzer – With Spoilers In this, his fifth novel (previous works include The First Counsel and The Tenth Justice), Meltzer spins his trademark breathless chase scenes through our nation’s capitol, the usual brace of innocents fleeing from a cold-blooded killer on a mission from a terrorist regime. The usual fast-paced action will please Meltzer fans, or others who expect plenty of twists and turns in their plots without regard to consistency or probability. You can expect the usual breathtaking action scenes in which the hero, battered and bloodied, refuses to give up – finally seizing an infinitesimal advantage to avert his own death before driving a ballpoint pen through the ear (or eye) of his relentless pursuer. We watch with precious little personal involvement as the foppish Harris and the cardboard Viv scramble from one disastrous encounter with Janos to the next; an out-of-shape Senate Aide and a gawky teenager somehow continually escaping the clutches of a martial arts master. Harris’s character is so weakly developed that he’s only slightly more attractive than the honey wagons he finds deep in the mine; Viv is, if anything, even less well-developed. Both are studies in stereotype: the “I’m-gonna-be-president-some-day teen” and the “I’m-so-bored” aide serve as mere pawns to be moved about Meltzer’s manic chessboard of a plot. It’s also just a little disconcerting to write a book in the first person and shift from one “first” to another after a couple of chapters – but that’s exactly what Meltzer does. Of course, since the first “first” is dead, I guess he has to… As action novels go, The Zero Game is slightly better than so-so for its high level of suspense and thrills. It also gives us “commoners” a glimpse of some of the inner workings of power in Washington, where congressional staffers and lobbyists (no surprise there!) apparently have more input into the governing process than do the elected representatives. The views of the “underbelly” of the halls of power – both physical (the buildings) and political (the people) – are well-researched and educational; probably why Meltzer’s acknowledgment list is somewhere around a gazillion people. However, as a novel The Zero Game is fatally flawed by a plot that is simply so far-fetched that it distracts from the foreground action. The basis of that plot is completely unbelievable – why would sinister foreign nationals choose to build their super-secret installation in the middle of friggin' North America!!?? As the level of action rises to fever pitch, the implausibility of not just plot points but the very survival of the heroes also rises like a skyrocket, disappearing out of sight long before the final showdown. If I were you, I’d skip it. capsule: bright red honey wagons, secret hideaways for Senators, appropriations committee hijinks, potential Mann Act violations, stick-figure characters, claustrophobia, Yemeni terrorists all content copyright © 2001-present by scmrak
|