The Zero

There's a difficulty with recording a grim satire that has nothing to do with the talent of the narrator. (Christopher Graybill is quite wonderful here, warm and skillful.) Black humor lies in the disjunction between the awful things happening to the protagonist and the reader's perception of how absurd it is. On the page it's comic when Gulliver is captured by tiny Lilliputians, to us, but not to Gulliver. Apparently, on the page this novel of a Kafka-esque version of New York after 9/11 is darkly funny; but to hear it well read is to identify with Walter's protagonist, for whom this alternate universe is terrifying and confusing, physically and morally. Quite brilliant, but clearly different to hear than to read with your eyes. B.G. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

July 24, 2006
A deliriously mordant political satire, Walter's follow-up to 2005's critically acclaimed Citizen Vince
begins moments after New York City cop Brian Remy shoots himself in the head. He isn't seriously wounded, and he can't remember doing it. It's less than a week after 9/11, and Brian serves as an official guide for celebrities who want a tour of "The Zero." With stitches still in his scalp, Brian is tapped for a job with the Documentation Department, a shadowy subagency of the Office of Liberty and Recovery, which is charged with scrutinizing every confetti scrap of paper blown across the city when the towers fell. As he learns the truth about his new employer's mission (think: recent NSA-related headlines) and becomes enmeshed in a sinister government plot, he finds an unseemly benefactor in "The Boss," the unnamed mayor who cashes in on his sudden national prominence. Meanwhile, Brian's cop and firemen colleagues shill for "First Responder" cereal, his rebellious teenage son acts as if Brian died in the attack and the president provides comic background sound bites ("draw your strength from the collective courage and resilientness"). Walter's Helleresque take on a traumatic time may be too much too soon for some, but he carries off his dark and hilarious narrative with a grandly grotesque imagination. 100,000
announced first printing; 12-city author tour.

Starred review from December 4, 2006
Walter's darkly satiric and surprisingly poignant novel about heroic policeman Brian Remy's nightmare journey through a post- 9/11 New York City, is given a flawless rendition by Graybill. Key to his success is the voice he has selected for the hapless, mind- and body-damaged Remy, who awakes from a failed suicide attempt with a head wound, a shattered memory and the slowly growing understanding that he's involved in a political plot as evil as it is bizarre. Walter's prose keeps Remy drifting from confusion to self-doubt, guilt and, eventually, outrage—and Graybill hits all the right notes as he adds the dimension of sound. He's just as effective in delineating the fragile otherworldly wistfulness of Remy's girlfriend, his boss's bombast, the self-absorbed nattering of his motor-mouth ex-partner-turned-TV-pitchman and an assortment of accents and attitudes from a cadre of sycophantic, sinister, sadistic and generally smarmy secret agents—both American and Middle Eastern. It's a brilliant teaming of the right narrator to the right material. Simultaneous release with the Regan hardcover (Reviews, July 24).