The Zero

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).

August 15, 2006
Real-life events still strive to catch up with the imagination of Franz Kafka. Here, Walter has NYPD member Brian Remy awaken not as a bug but as the victim of an unsuccessful attempt on his own life, commemorated by a suicide note reading in its entirety, -Etc. - He comes to in the nightmare of post-9/11 New York City, where his body is failing, his sight is afflicted by floaters, and his memory is subject to significant lapses. He is, in short, a mess and also an all too representative inhabitant of this brave new world, where the nation has morphed into a public relations firm and -The Boss - is determined to fight back, even at the cost of having each and every American sit through "Tony and Tina's Wedding". Following his Edgar Award -winning "Citizen Vince" (with its alternate take on the Carter-Reagan debate), Walter goes from strength to strength, establishing himself as the current master of fractured U.S. history with all of the surrealism and black humor necessary for such an undertaking. Kafka would have to laugh (and we do, too). For all public libraries." -Bob Lunn, Kansas City P.L."

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 15, 2006
Numerous thrillers have drawn on 9/11, but most have used those all-too-horrific events only as a frame. Walter digs deeper. This discombobulating but remarkably imaginative novel never names bin Laden or even the date, but we know where we are. Bits of paper from the explosions continue to rain down from the sky, and rescue workers continue to look for bodies at Ground Zero (or, the Zero, as the cops and firefighters who were there refer to it). One of those cops, Brian Remy, opens the novel by shooting himself in the head. But, minutes later, he can't remember doing it. Remy suffers from what he calls "gaps"--memory lapses in which he has no idea why he is doing what he's doing. These gaps are the main narrative device in the novel, and they take some getting used to, as the reader is every bit as affected by the blackouts as Remy. Gradually, both character and reader begin to piece things together: Remy has been hired by the "Boss" to lead a secret "documentation recovery" effort aimed at finding a link between the terrorists and a woman working in one of the towers. But to what end? Even in his lucid moments, Remy doesn't understand his assignment, which seems to have something to do with "applying models of randomness to the patterns in paper burns." There is plenty of stinging political satire here, but beyond that, Walter has taken the terrorist thriller into new territory, mixing the surreal cityscape of " Blade Runner " with a touch of Kafka and coming up with what may be the perfect metaphor for the way we experience today's world. Like Remy, we suffer from gaps whenever we watch the news or try to make sense of international affairs: randomness reigns. This isn't a perfect novel, but it takes a game shot at re-creating the emotional reality of the post-9/11 world. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)