Postaday for May 4th: Coming To a Bookshelf Near You. Write a summary of the book you’ve always wanted to write for the back cover of its dust jacket.
In a novel of slapstick mayhem and unrelenting self-contradiction, a robotic assassin makes chaos out of hubris and peanut butter out of chaos. The crunchy kind.
Chris Hutchins is just a lousy GS-11. He occupies that lonely every-man’s land on the edge of the spy world, close enough to look in, but bolted firmly on the wrong side of the bullet-proof plexiglass.
Lancaster is the ultimate assassin, spy, evil genius, oxford comma connoisseur, and cowboy aficionado, all wrapped up into one metal-alloy skeleton. His mission: he could tell you, but then he’d have to kill you. Come to think of it, he doesn’t have to tell you anything, since he’s going to kill you anyway.
When a series of increasingly ridiculous assassinations force the spy community to put their differences aside and take action, the metaphors start to fly like broken china in a shop run by bulls. Or something. Surfing the edge of the sea foam on the waves of Lancaster’s dastardly plan, Chris has only one hope—that the author will stay drunk enough, long enough, to focus on the plot and stop toying with the fourth wall so much.
Drawing from the very tropes that prop up almost 90% of all spy fiction, and unabashedly stealing from the originality of the other ten percent, this is, if not a hilarious novel, at least a hilarious attempt at one.