The Man Who Turned Into Himself

This unimpressive fiction debut uses theoretical physics to explain the fantastical events it describes. Rick Hamilton, publisher of a small journal based in Connecticut, has a premonition of his wife's death in a car crash. He rushes out of an important business meeting and speeds to the scene of the accident without questioning how he knows where to go. But he is too late; seeing his wife die, he blacks out and awakens to an altered reality-- he is being pulled from the wreckage of the car as his wife looks on. Rick, as it turns out, is trapped inside the body of Richard A. Hamilton, his counterpart in our universe. (Among other differences in Rick's parallel universe, John F. Kennedy, Bobby and Marilyn Monroe are all alive). Soon, with the help of a blind psychiatrist, Rick formulates a plan to use hypnosis to send him ``home.'' Though the writing is glossy and efficient, Hollywood screenwriter Ambrose seems uncomfortable working in narrative prose. Seeking to move the action along, he often succumbs to awkward techniques--letters, tape transcripts and monologues--that could come straight out of a theater's one-man show. And for all its fancy quantum mechanical explanations, the plot is unconvincing and predictable. Movie rights to HBO. (Feb.)