Water Hazrad

Borg gives a few new twists to some old suspense conventions in this turgid debut, which quickly sinks under the burden of abstract philosophizing. At a Twin Cities watering hole, a man named Anderson is drugged and kidnapped. He revives as he is being drowned in a lake, fends off his attacker, whom he drowns, and then discovers that the corpse looks just like him. ``It is not his own face in a metaphorical sense. It is his own face in a literal sense.'' After observing police cars swarming his own home, he flees to the address found in the wallet he pulls from his pocket and is greeted as Mr. Peterson. With everyone believing he's Peterson, Anderson begins to wonder if it just might be so. The unconvincing, heavy-handed narrative doesn't bear the metaphysical weight Borg gives it. Romantic entanglements and excessive detailing slow the plot, while the present-tense narration and overstating of the obvious (""`You tell me,' he replies, wishing she would'') quickly wear thin. (Apr.)