THE ZERO
by Jess Walter

In The Zero by Jess Walter, policeman Brian Remy has come unstuck in time, much like Billy Pilgrim in Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. Rather than the firebombing of Dresden, Remy has just experienced the collapse of the World Trade Center. And it seems that his dislocation is a result of his work for a clandestine security agency. The Zero refers to Ground Zero. Walter's style is more DeLillo than Vonnegut.

Jess Walter comes close to taking a stand as a 9-11 Truther, mentioning the criminal speed with which steel beams were whisked away from Ground Zero and sold for scrap, but sticks with the "pancaking" story. His narrative hints at a Condon-esque mind control program-- Remy comes out of fugues to find he has done horrible things he can't quite remember at the behest of his shadowy superiors. The main vector in the narrative is Remy's progress toward realizing that the terrorist cell he's stalking was actually created by his own security agency.

Walter points toward many of the gaps in the official 9-11 story, but, perhaps under the influence of his conservative publisher, Reganbooks, hesitates to eviscerate the official myth. The resulting book is quite good, but it lacks the courage of its convictions. It's as if the protagonist of Heart of Darkness turned back before he met Kurtz, saying, "I've seen enough-- this is some spooky shit!"

Still, Walter scores some direct hits-- a CIA agent scoffs at Remy, saying, "There is no press anymore." The Giuliani figure advises Remy, "The private sector is the ultimate covert ops." And an Arab agent tells him, "You demand the propaganda of distraction and triviality, and it has become your religion, your national faith." --C. B. Coble