cover image Time and Chance

Time and Chance

Alan Brennert. Tor Books, $17.95 (281pp) ISBN 978-0-312-93192-6

On closing night of a Broadway revival of Brigadoon , actor Richard Cochrane blows his lines when a voice no one else hears disrupts the performance. Shortly thereafter, he is told that his mother has died. Returning to his home in New Hampshire, the lonely actor is forced to reevaluate his life. Then a strange thing happens: he finds he has changed bodies with the man he might have been. No longer a lonely actor, Cochrane is employed in a life insurance firm, unhappily married and a failure as a father. Meanwhile, Rick, the ``other man,'' occupies Richard's body in Manhattan and conducts a nasty, cocaine-tooting affair with Richard's hard-as-nails ex-wife. Brennert ( Kindred Spirits ) spins a playful, affecting and well-written tale in the best tradition of The Twilight Zone. (Jan.)