Fifty Mice

November 10, 2014
At the start of this wonderfully paranoid jaunt through competing realities from Pyne (Twentynine Palms), Jay Johnson, an ordinary guy, is abducted at a Los Angeles subway station. A deputy U.S. marshal known as Public later informs him that he’s in the Federal Witness Protection Program because of a murder investigation. While Jay claims ignorance, it becomes apparent that his memories are easily forgotten, manipulated, or invented. He’s given a fake family as cover, and, as his life begins to resemble a performance art piece, layers of artificially reconstructed events begin to reveal their true nature. Even Santa Catalina Island, where Jay winds up, is like a film set, a Potemkin village populated by federal agents and witness protection program inductees. As Jay struggles to discover the truth, Pyne’s confident hand guides readers to a surprising, popcorn-dropping final twist. Agent: Victoria Sanders: Victoria Sanders & Associates.

December 15, 2014
Thirtysomething Jay Johnson is so dispirited that he can't even hate his telephone sales job. He's engaged to be married, but he can't commit to his fianc'e. The best thing in his life is a weekly pickup basketball game. But all that changes when he is abducted off a crowded L.A. commuter rail car, drugged, and held by U.S. marshals, who tell him he's in the Witness Protection Program. The rub is that the feds require that he tell them what he saw that threatens his life, and Jay knows that his empty life contains no such dramaexcept a traumatic experience in childhood that he cannot articulate, even to himself. Soon, his former existence has been erased, and he's been relocated to Catalina Island with his new wife and a daughter who can't, or won't, speak. In this Kafkaesque predicament, Jay bonds with the silent little girl. Pyne's Twentynine Palms (2010) was great fun in a noirish way, but this one, while still drawing on the noir tradition, is a much more serious consideration of memory and how it functions, or doesn't.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2014

A director (Where's Marlowe?) and screenwriter for film (e.g., the remake of The Manchurian Candidate) and television (e.g., Miami Vice), Pyne launched his writing career with the well-received Twentynine Palms. This new thriller features hapless Jay, who finds himself kidnapped and placed in a Witness Protection Program on Catalina Island because he supposedly knows highly classified information he can't quite dig up from his memory.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 1, 2014

Jay Johnson is floating through life; if pressed, he would probably say that happiness has been elusive. After all, being alive isn't the same as living. Things take a drastic turn for Jay when he's placed into the witness protection program very much against his will and whisked away to an enclave on Catalina Island, populated with program people and a gaggle of federal agents. They claim he knows something, and he's convinced they've got the wrong guy, so he sets about planning an escape. However, Jay never counted on coming to care for his Fed-provided wife and child, the enigmatic Ginger and her mute daughter. Running out of time, Jay must reach deep inside himself to find an answer, but confronting his past may be more than he can handle. VERDICT Screenwriter and author Pyne (Twentynine Palms) weaves a smart, exceedingly clever, and unusual tale with a horrible secret at its center, which is as much a late coming-of-age story as it is a thriller. Fans of brainy noir will find much to love in this highly satisfying, big-screen-ready book. [See Prepub Alert, 6/16/14.]--Kristin Centorcelli, Denton, TX

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2014

Jay Johnson is floating through life; if pressed, he would probably say that happiness has been elusive. After all, being alive isn't the same as living. Things take a drastic turn for Jay when he's placed into the witness protection program very much against his will and whisked away to an enclave on Catalina Island, populated with program people and a gaggle of federal agents. They claim he knows something, and he's convinced they've got the wrong guy, so he sets about planning an escape. However, Jay never counted on coming to care for his Fed-provided wife and child, the enigmatic Ginger and her mute daughter. Running out of time, Jay must reach deep inside himself to find an answer, but confronting his past may be more than he can handle. VERDICT Screenwriter and author Pyne (Twentynine Palms) weaves a smart, exceedingly clever, and unusual tale with a horrible secret at its center, which is as much a late coming-of-age story as it is a thriller. Fans of brainy noir will find much to love in this highly satisfying, big-screen-ready book. [See Prepub Alert, 6/16/14.]--Kristin Centorcelli, Denton, TX

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.