From Publishers Weekly
Heavily influenced by post-9/11 paranoia, Moody's mostly successful trio of novellas pits its wayward characters against conspiracies sometimes entirely imagined. Dr. James Van Deusen, the loquacious, alcoholic, patently unreliable narrator of "The Omega Force," relies on his background in a "cabinet-level agency" and a mass market thriller to unravel a murky plot that, in his hobbled head, involves locals and a group of "dark-complected" individuals targeting the Plum Island Animal Disease Center. "K&K," the weakest of the three, takes the hidden tensions of a small insurance brokerage's office to an absurd level as office manager Ellie Knight-Cameron investigates a string of bizarre anonymous suggestions left in the office's suggestion box. Ellie's obsession isn't quite believable, and the novella ends abruptly, as if Moody gave up on it. "The Albertine Notes," the strongest piece in the book, describes a future New York after a dirty bomb destroys much of Manhattan. Kevin Lee fills his reporter's notebook for a story about the new drug of choice, Albertine, which transports users into their most pleasurable memories. Kevin succumbs to Albertine as well, and the layering of hallucination and reality that follows demonstrates why Moody has a reputation as a deft stylist. Two out of three ain't bad.
(June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Booklist
In the three novellas collected here, Moody turns from the comic satire of
The Diviners (2005) to more paranoid scenarios influenced by the aftermath of 9/11. In "The Omega Force," a retired government official obsessed with the plots of "dark-complected" foreign nationals wreaks havoc in his staid beachfront community. With his paranoia fueled by his recent calamitous fall off the wagon, Dr. Jamie Van Deusen staggers from one lounge chair to another, convinced that the community is under attack. In "K& K," lonely, overweight office manager Ellie Knight-Cameron becomes unnerved by the increasingly aggressive tone of the notes she finds in the office suggestion box, which have escalated from complaints about the bad coffee to threats against her life. Both of these novellas, though, seem mere previews to the piece de resistance, "The Albertine Notes," which has been previously collected both in
McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales (2003) and
Year's Best SF 9 (2004). New York City struggles to survive in the aftermath of a bomb that has leveled 50 square blocks of Manhattan. Much of the remaining populace has become addicted to the drug Albertine, which allows its users to not only vividly relive their memories but also go back in time and change them. It's the perfect scenario for Moody's particular brand of swaggering wordplay, and he just runs with it.
Joanne WilkinsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
