THE RIPPLE

Radiologist Zinn's first novel: a ridiculous and somewhat confusing tale of a couple of murderous hermaphrodites. ""If one could have squeezed the entire dictionary and wrung it out until it was bone dry, he would have produced one superconcentrated drop powerful enough to describe in words the kind of awesome striking beauty this unclothed woman radiated."" The naked nymph in question turns up in a New York hospital, suffering from amnesia and suspected by the police of murdering a Central Park jogger. The sympathetic and notvery-bright young intern Dr. Adam Lloyd takes her home, calls her Marilyn--because of her resemblance to the Great Monroe--and tries to put the moves on her, only to find that she isn't having any: she's waiting for a mysterious ""Someone"" to arrive. Someone turns out to be a California serial killer nicknamed (by the baffled police) Tarzan; Tarzan is able to change sex at will and thus rape and kill both men and women as he travels east for a rendezvous with none other than, yes, Marilyn, who is acting very strange and has taken to laying eggs in a Central Park pond. Fortunately, though, Tarzan emits strong radio waves, which allow the police to track him to New York and to kill him before he can couple with Marilyn and possibly create a race of murderous hermaphroditic shape-changers. The young intern is naturally a bit shocked by all this. . .but will accept Marilyn for what she is. Are Marilyn and Tarzan aliens? Evolutionary freaks? The reader is left feeling much like Dr. Lloyd: ""He was a man lost in a head full of static.