The Zero Game
By Brad Meltzer

      What do two House and Senate interns have to do to escape the endless C-SPAN? It’s not as if you can always count on partisan bickering, campaign finance shockers, political scandal, racist senators’ controversies, and Ted Kennedy showing up soused…oh wait a minute, yes, you can. But apart from Teddy, as P.J. O’Rourke says, “the real problem is that government is boring.”

      Fortunately, Brad Meltzer’s The Zero Game, which opens with the O’Rourke witticism, not only might get people watching C-SPAN again, it might even drive the apathetic voters who don’t know John Kerry from Jim Carrey (here’s a tip: even if they did once have the same bad hair, Carrey’s funnier) to turn off the Super Bowl and care what their representatives are doing.

      However, as Monica Lewinsky proved, you also have to watch those interns. And as Harris Sandler discovers, defending betting on congressional legislation won’t work if all you have for your excuse is “It was just a game,” which in Meltzer’s view seems to be a whopper equal to “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” Furthermore, Meltzer makes a point as old as Faust: The moment you forget that politics is a game that has no clear winner, you’ve already lost your very soul.

       You can bet on seventeen-year-old Senate page Viv Parker, who’s got plenty of soul and as much kick as Jennifer Garner, to teach Harris that lesson. Unfortunately, the wisdom is too late for Harris’ friend Matthew Mercer, Harris’ mentor Bud Pasternak, and “the next Colin Powell” Lowell Nash from the US Attorney General’s office. But the slimy villains (who prove, perhaps unintentionally, that yes, Virginia, there are WMD) Viv and Harris learn the lesson Enron and Co. have yet to understand, for as Lowell’s assistant says, don’t mess with the Justice Department. Also, as Harris discovers, don’t underestimate a seventeen-year-old black female who may herself be “the next Colin Powell”. And don’t, before you vote in the primaries, caucuses and Decision 2004, pass up this heartfelt adrenaline rush (with the obligatory run-for-your-life chases) coming out of Brad Meltzer.