BEAT THE DEVILS

In the alternative late-1950s America of Weiss' first novel, Commie-hater Joseph McCarthy is president, undesirables are being rounded up and deported, and it's open warfare on “individual[s] of Judaic Origins”—including LA police detective Morris Baker.

A Holocaust survivor of Czech origins, Baker is hooked on peach schnapps, has dingy sex with an aspiring actress, and suffers from recurring concentration camp nightmares. His life perks up when he's assigned to the celebrity double murder of rising TV journalist Walter Cronkite and forcibly retired film director John Huston. The investigation leads him to partner up with sexy Soviet spy Sophia Vikhrov, with whom he cutely uncovers a bomb plot involving imported German scientists, including Werner von Braun. For his troubles, Baker gets his front teeth knocked out by thugs from the House Un-American Activities Committee and, in a subsequent torture scene, has more teeth pulled (no subsequent signs of dental distress are evident). Edward R. Murrow makes a surprise appearance, Humphrey Bogart a decidedly un-Bogielike one, reduced to propagandist in films like It Came From Planet Communist! Fidel Castro and Che Guevera have been publicly executed. All the pieces for an edgy piece of speculative fiction are in place. But Weiss, no Philip Roth, falls into the trap of using collective trauma as a cheap backdrop for Baker’s shenanigans, and there’s something creepy about his treatment of Cronkite and Huston (whose film Beat the Devil inspired the book's title). In his acknowledgments, Weiss writes, “The story is, first and foremost, about Baker and his journey of adopting a new worldview.” Second and secondmost would have worked a lot better.

A reimagined America that is short on fresh ideas and long on misplaced humor.