Night of the Avenging Blowfish: A Novel of Covert Operations, Love, and Luncheon Meat

Humor may be the most personal of all tastes, so it's difficult to forecast how many readers will construe same in Welter's second novel (after Begin to Exit Here ). One problem for many will be the oddly old-fashioned romance between narrator/Secret Service agent Doyle Coldiron and a White House secretary, not to mention Coldiron's mawkish musings on loneliness occasioned by that ill-fated relationship. And that's a big problem because, if the story here is about anything, it is about that romance, seemingly doomed because Natelle, the object of the agent's affections, is a married woman. The rest of the goings-on have to do with a phantom baseball game between the Secret Service and the CIA, and with Coldiron's fall into disfavor when he fails to stop the White House chef from serving Spam to the President and an honored guest (the chef is upset because the President, after eating a hot dog at a baseball game, suggested that he didn't receive such high quality food in the White House). Some of Welter's commentary on the national scene is dead-on. After the fired chef goes on national TV to suggest that the President thinks he's too good for ``ordinary food,'' for instance, the Leader of the Free World embarks on a public diet of Vienna sausages, wieners and the like: ``If it came from a dead animal and was held in low culinary esteem, the President made sure he was seen eating it.'' The overall effort, however, is strained. Suffice it to say that Weltner's humor is most likely an acquired taste. (May)