The Zero Game
Meltzer, Brad. 2003. The Zero Game.
Rating:
6
Summary:
Particularly far-fetched, though somewhat engaging
Matthew Mercer and Harris Sandler are veteran political staffers on Capitol Hill that are looking for something spice up their lives. As Matthew notes at the beginning of the book, they used to be get excited when they bumped into famous senators or congressional representatives, but they seem have grown callous to their situation.
It is exactly at this point that Harris is made aware of what is supposed to be a long-running game played by people just like him and Matthew. It’s called The Zero Game and involves subtle manipulations of bills, senators, representatives, or other elements of Capital Hill as bets and challenges (for a complete description of what is going on, read the book). Matthew and Harris jump on the chance to liven up their doldrums lives and are quickly sucked into the game. Everything seems to be going fine until an issue pops up in the game for which Matthew is perfectly suited – a small mining company wants to buy an abandoned gold mine in South Dakota and all they need is congressional approval. Matthew, working for the senator from South Dakota and sitting on the Appropriations Committee, is in a perfect position to get the congressional approval. He places a very high bid in the game that he can get the approval, but when a senate page arrives to take the money back to the dungeon masters (the people controlling the game), Matthew gets nervous and follows the page.
It is at this point that the book takes a significant turn. Matthew quickly realizes that the page isn’t taking his money to some other staffers, but no sooner than he realizes this is he attacked and killed by the faux page. Immediately the cover up begins as Martin Janos, the clean up person hired by the same people who wanted the mine approval, arrives on the scene. He kills the faux page then begins tracking down the other people that were involved, including Harris and Harris’s former boss. Harris, through luck and quick reflexes, manages to stay one step ahead of the ruthless Janos, all the while trying to piece together what is happening. Enlisting the help of another senate page, a tall black girl named Viv Parker, Harris uncovers a sinister plot by a foreign country to create Plutonium on U.S. soil. Janos, who has been hired to stop that knowledge from getting out, very nearly succeeds in stopping Harris and Viv.
Review:
If you look at another book I just recently read and reviewed, you’ll see that these two books have similar designs – the author knows a lot about one thing in particular (politics in this case), but isn’t a particularly great writer and doesn’t know much about anything else (science and neutrinos, though he does a decent job presenting this component of the story). The result, as was the case in the other book, is a story that is more informative about politics than it is entertaining.
Hands down the biggest problem with this story was the sudden trip to South Dakota. Harris, a relatively young staffer with virtually no money doesn’t seem to have any problems footing the bill to make an impromptu trip to South Dakota from D.C. with a 16 year-old black girl in tow. He makes no preparations and doesn’t even know what he is looking for. Even Indiana Jones didn’t head into the eye of the storm with so little planning. I think I may have been more favorable toward the story if a little more planning had gone into the South Dakota trip. It would undoubtedly have slowed the story a bit, but it would have been more convincing.
The characters in the book are remarkably shallow. Janos is a ruthless mercenary, nothing more. Harris and Matthew have no real depth to their characters other than some very mild backstory involving Harris growing up in a small town. The biggest efforts at character development involve Viv Parker, the young, black, senate page who ends up helping Harris. I felt like I knew her better than any of the other characters and she wasn’t even the main character.
My last criticism involves the perspective of the author. It seems he can only write in the first-person. The book begins with narrative by Matthew, but since Matthew dies, his perspective dies with him. It then moves to a first-person Harris perspective, but occasionally shifts to a first-person Janos perspective, first-person Viv perspective, and even first-person Barry (a blind, evil lobbyist involved with the story) perspective. I guess the story gets told, but I found it more than a little annoying to keep switching perspectives like that. Also, the author seems to have mixed his tenses at times, jumping from past to present. Most of the time it was unnoticeable, but occasionally the characters would be presenting the story in past tense then move to the present. I may be making a bigger deal over this than I should, but it also seemed out of place and awkward.
Over all, though I did find the book somewhat engaging, I didn’t buy the story line and wasn’t all that impressed with the writing. The character development was simplistic and the author’s knowledge of politics (if it is, indeed, accurate) overshadowed everything else about the book. I’d love to hear if a political staffer on Capital Hill believes this book to be accurate; I certainly can’t make that assertion. If it is accurate, then it may be useful as an insight into the politics of Capitol Hill.
(Note: I listened to this book on CD.)