Mongoose Man

A renegade terrorist with a flair for self-promotion goes on a killing spree in Van Pelt's problematic debut, which starts dramatically enough with an explosion in San Francisco that kills dozens of innocents. The villain is freelance bad guy Bobby Pearl; his chief antagonist, CIA agent Jake Hipp, the ""mongoose man"" of the title, is charged with tracking down the elusive ""snake."" After the California bombing, Pearl ups the ante, broadcasting his subsequent attacks via a sleazy talk show hosted by a Geraldo-like figure named Joaquin Hurtado. When the FBI uncovers Pearl's expertise in both chemical and biological weapons, the government panics. So when Hurtado is murdered, the president is suspected: only the mongoose man can keep the commander in chief out of jail. Van Pelt's herky-jerky storytelling and weird expository outbursts (e.g., ""The Constitution had been written in the late eighteenth century, the end of the period historians had dubbed `The Age of Reason'"") prevent the narrative from gathering much momentum, and the sophomoric, by-the-numbers plot seems constructed to cash in on as many headline-related incidents as possible. Van Pelt, whose biography calls him a ""member of the intelligence community,"" displays little here in the way of either imagination or expertise to separate this book from a raft of similar titles. (Aug.)