July Publications

Florida politics get roundly skewered in Tim Dorsey's (Hammerhead Ranch Hotel) Orange Crush, a relentless farce about the battle for the Sunshine State's governorship between Republican incumbent Marlon Conrad and Democratic underdog Gomer Tatum. Conrad, completely beholden to special-interest groups, seems like a shoo-in, but an epiphany for Conrad when his reserve unit is posted to the Balkans changes everything. Would-be assassins, spin doctors, scandalmongers, bloodthirsty journalists, lobbyists and at least one serial killer (Dorsey regular Serge E. Storms) are along for the wild ride. Thoroughly cynical and over-the-top from the prologue to the "note on the type," it will produce laughs under many a beach umbrella. (Morrow, $25 293p ISBN 0-06-018577-5; July 10)

Jane Gillooly is an exotic dancer in Las Vegas with some very unusual family history in Liza Wieland's (You Can Sleep While I Drive) Bombshell. Once Jane's father told her, "I'm falling out of the world." Years later, her stepbrother, Charlie, comes to town with a revelation: he is convinced that her father is the Unabomber and one of his victims was Charlie's own wife. All three take turns narrating, shining lights into the dark corners of the human mind and soul in their search for understanding. Reflective, poetic and dreamlike, this powerful novel boasts blurbs from the likes of Madison Smartt Bell. (Southern Methodist Univ., $19.95 272p ISBN 0-87074-462-3)

Although an earlier version was first published as Whip Hand by W. Franklin Sanders in 1961, the publisher declares this to be the original Deliver Me from Dallas!, for which the late Charles Willeford (Shark-Infested Custard, the Hoke Moseley series, etc.) deserves full credit. (Confused? All is explained in Jesse Sublett's introduction.) Ex-cop Bill Brown flees L.A. for Dallas, where he runs into all manner of trouble, including some murderous hillbilly kidnappers and a woman who wields a mean bullwhip. This hardboiled yarn is remarkably well constructed and should find an enthusiastic audience among aficionados of Jim Thompson and the like. (Dennis McMillan, $30 192p ISBN 0-939767-38-4)

David Albahari's Bait (trans. from the Serbian by Peter Agnone) opens with the narrator's attempts to tape-record his mother's voice, her life story. We learn that she has since died and the young man is a Serbian exile living in Canada, listening to the tapes and trying to make sense of the events that have shaped his life. The book is essentially an extended meditation on history (both grand and intimate), family and loss. Alas, the pace is sluggish and the tone relentlessly somber; that the book is arranged in a continuous block of text without paragraphs doesn't help. (Northwestern Univ., $49.95 118p ISBN 0-8101-1882-3; paper $14.95 -1883-1)