Among the Dead

The author/screenwriter of The Player scores again in this drolly morbid novel, a gleefully vicious combination of satire and propulsive storytelling. The night before L.A. businessman Frank Gale is to take his wife, Anna, and daughter to Mexico, he writes a letter he plans to give Anna on their arrival, confessing an affair and asking for her understanding. Next day, he breaks up with his mistress at lunch but misses the flight. Frank calls Anna from his limo phone, promising to follow her on the next plane out. She tells him she has found the letter in his suitcase, but boards the aircraft anyway; the plane crashes, killing everyone. Among the Dead is, on one hand, the excruciatingly detailed story of the aftermath of such an airline disaster--the claiming of bodies, the legal maneuvering with the airline, the media sensationalism. On the other hand, it is the chronicle of Frank's private anguish, in an interior monologue just absurd enough to be believable. Tolkin has carefully plotted Frank's unravelling so his descent is absolute, the kind of breakdown that is impossible to look away from, where the worst you can imagine happens, and proves horrible and uproarious at the same time. Uniquely incompetent despite his sharp eye, Gale is both repugnant and compellingly human, a creation worthy of J. P. Donleavy. Author tour. (Apr.)