Rick Moody is off on a frolic of his own with these three very distinct novellas, different in content, style and character, but unmistakably Moody-esque. As in The Diviners and The Ice Storm, he deals with alienation, finding it everywhere he looks.
In the first novella, The Omega Force, we follow Dr. Jamie Van Deusen, a feckless former government official, from the time that he wakes up, disheveled and hungover on a neighbor's porch, through a vague, non-specific time wherein he decides that he must save his WASPy enclave from the invasion of "dark-complected" persons bent on destroying the animals on Plum Island. His alienation from his surroundings, fueled by alcohol, causes wild surmises to overtake him, and his imagination is reinforced by his reading of a thriller-diller: The Omega Force: Code White. This story is very funny, made even funnier by the arch and stilted language of Jamie, his utterly outlandish utterances to everyone he meets and his choice of wardrobe....
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