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You cannot come away from reading a Brad Meltzer book without being just a little smarter. THE FIRST COUNSEL provided an extremely interesting peek behind the curtains of the White House. THE MILLIONAIRES contained several side dissertations about finance that were not only informative but also interesting. In his latest offering, THE ZERO GAME, Meltzer provides an illuminating, and at times, quietly frightening look at the way the United States government does --- and does not --- work.
At age 19 Meltzer was an intern on Capitol Hill. Along the way he apparently acquired a bit of knowledge about appropriations committees. You've heard the term "appropriations committee." It's a term of art that usually causes one's eyes to glaze over. He apparently did a lot more than work on Capitol Hill, however; he observed and absorbed a lot as well, if THE ZERO GAME is any indication.
The initial focus of the novel is the appropriations committees of the House and Senate. Matthew Mercer and Harris Sandler are good friends who are on appropriations committees in the House and Senate, respectively. One day Sandler lets Mercer in on something called the Zero Game, which is kind of a clandestine government office betting pool. But it isn't a wager on football games --- it's a bet on such things as how many votes will be cast for or against House resolutions, or whether items will be included or excluded from bills or resolutions. The fact that the participants in the game don't know the identity of the other players, other than the pool member who invites them to participate, adds to the intrigue.
Meltzer initially takes a bit longer to set up THE ZERO GAME than he ordinarily does in his novels, and for just a page or two his regular readers might wonder if he's going to tone things down a bit for this offering. Never fear. The quiet beginning is a setup. After the first 50 pages or so Meltzer takes a completely unexpected left turn that will have you rereading a paragraph or two several times until you're sure that he actually did what you think he did. I still can't believe it, but he did do it.
From there, Meltzer doesn't even give his reader a chance to come up for air. What appears to be a harmless, even beneficial, line item in an appropriations bill --- authorizing the private acquisition of an abandoned, and apparently worthless, gold mine in South Dakota --- becomes a wager subject of the Zero Game and leads to a desperate cross-country race to determine why someone is willing to stop at nothing --- including murder --- to ensure that the transfer of the land goes through.
Meltzer is in fine form here, as his protagonists are pursued back and forth across the country with an ultimate, and perhaps symbolic, showdown in the bowels of the Capitol Building. The elements that make Meltzer's work so addictive are all present here. Meltzer has few equals in his ability to ratchet the suspense level of his narratives to new highs, all the while dropping interesting little factoids about the nooks and crannies of his well-known surroundings. I learned more about the Capitol Building in a few pages of THE ZERO GAME than I learned from a solid year of high school civics. Yet Meltzer never lets the information drag his storyline down. There are times when reading this book is like being taken on a tour of the Capitol Building by a tour guide who has a pistol stuck in your ear while you race through the corridors of government. You know where you are and you're conscious of what he's saying, but you're praying that everything turns out okay.
Meltzer also demonstrates some familiarity with caverns. I don't know if he is a spelunker in his spare time, but his descriptions of mine shafts and caverns are dead on. Maybe a little too dead-on, actually. If you're at all claustrophobic, you might want to read the last half of the book outside so you can take a breath once in a while.
With THE ZERO GAME Meltzer continues to demonstrate his ability to present a complex plot in an understandable manner while using it as a method to propel his characters, and the reader, through a reading experience that is unstoppable. Although this is only Meltzer's fifth novel, he writes like a Grandmaster of many years' experience. If you haven't reserved a bookshelf in your library for him yet, you will soon.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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