THE PUTT AT THE END OF THE WORLD

A relentlessly unfunny comic novel about golf and Armageddon by Abbott and eight other writers, each of whom contribute a chapter (a la 1997's Naked Came the Manatee): Dave Barry, Richard Bausch, James Crumley, James W. Hall, Tami Hoag, Tim O'Brien, Ridley Pearson, and Standiford.

To publicize his magnificent new course, billionaire Phillip Bates, CEO of Macrodyne Software, has decided to host the mother of all golf tournaments. The course is somewhere in Scotland. The list of those invited includes glitterati from every headline-worthy walk of life: politics, show biz, the media, even some golfers. Prominent among the latter are Billy Sprague, one of the world's sweetest swingers until there's money involved, at which point he turns hacker; gorgeous Rita Shaugnessy, who can outdrive many of the men on the tour and outdrink all of them; and Alfonso Zamora, `the Marvelous Mex”—earlier in his career a really nice guy but now a full-fledged crank. Among the uninvited, however, is a certain Francois LeTour, noted terrorist, and there's the rub. No drivers, putters, or innocent irons in LeTour's bag—uh-uh. He comes bearing 50 pounds of Semtex, enough to level `the House of Lords, any of the bridges, and Westminster Abbey,` an appalled British intelligence officer tells his FBI counterpart. Exactly why LeTour wants to bring his particular world view to the party is left on the murky side, but then motivation rates only a nudge and a wink here in general. The guests assemble, people sleep together, get killed, come to life again, kill others, and finally the stage is set for that fateful putt. It's Bates who lines it up. Will it drop, or will the world end not with a bang but a flub?

Further proof that both comedy and golf are hard and need to be taken seriously.