cover image The Search

The Search

Robert Mayer. Doubleday Books, $16.95 (277pp) ISBN 978-0-385-19760-1

Herbert Feeney is a nuclear research scientist with two obsessive desiresto compensate the world for his father's contribution to the discovery of nuclear arms, and to wreak vengeance on a colleague who ""stole'' his ex-wife. Along the way, he blackmails a waitress who is wanted by the FBI for radical acts in the '60s, murders a priest, kills the waitress's cousin, tries to burn down a cabin with two people in it, and attempts another murder. James Axel Rood, a New Mexico photographer and CIA stringer, aids local police in tracking down the madman. Rood is also working through his guilt for wanting his lover Gabriella to abort their baby. Mayer wields a powerful narrative pen, and he knows well the existential melodramas that plague human lives. But his talent and insight seem wasted here on an array of uninteresting characters, and his attempt to blend small-town lives with big-time espionage never fully succeeds. Mayer also wrote The Grace of Shortstops and Midge & Decker. January 24