Harry Blyne is a minimally successful writer—chronicler of heroic fictional spy Lew Hunter—who's married to the well-heeled owner of her late father's pub. On his 15th wedding anniversary, Harry takes his wife out to dinner, and by the end of the evening, thanks to a woman who encounters them at the restaurant, his marriage is in tatters and his wife has thrown him out. Creeping into the attic apartment of a sympathetic stranger, Harry waits for this ill wind to blow over, but things only get much, much worse. Vandals trash his car; he finds somebody's been spreading rumors that he's a child molester; he's followed from a drunken trip back home and kicked nearly to pieces; his tormentors erase the computer text of his latest novel, slip poison into his dinner, and jeeringly phone him to announce a program of revenge for somebody he drove to suicide. But Harry, driven to alarmingly plausible despair, drinking, and tears can't think of anybody he's ever injured and has no idea how to ward off the latest blow in this campaign of hate. His only hope is to be rescued, Walter Mitty-like, by his alter ego Lew Hunter.... Fotheringham, in a first US publication, spins a satisfyingly nasty paranoid fantasy, short and snappy as a good nightmare. Read full book review >