The Man Who Knew Too Little

" 'Yeah.' Remy put the cap back on.

" 'What made you do that?'

" 'I shot myself in the head last night.'

" 'Well.' Paul drove quietly for a moment, staring straight ahead. 'It looks good.' "

Walter nails our often surreal post-9/11 world, where exploitation of the tragedy has become commonplace. Remy spots "rows of news trucks, two dozen of them queued up for slow troll, grief fishing, block after block -- Action and Eyewitness and First At, dishes scooped to the sky like palms at a mass." His old partner signs a deal to promote First Responder cereal.

The novel falters, however, when Walter tries to sustain the credibility of Remy's frequent memory loss for 300 pages. Since we are confined to Remy's perspective, the reader experiences these lapses along with Remy. His disorientation becomes our disorientation, and his lapses raise a host of critical questions: Why is Remy remembering certain things but not others? Why does he remember "not remembering"?

The book's individual scenes are aesthetically appealing, but the reader can't get a grip on the plot's larger issues (namely, what is Remy's role in this secret organization; why does he continue doing what he's doing?). It becomes increasingly hard to care for a narrator who is unsure of his own motives and whose goals remain murky even to himself.

Despite this weakness, I was still won over. Walter is an immensely talented writer. In April, his Citizen Vince won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for best novel, and now he's written a new thriller not only with a conscience but also full of dead-on insights into our culture and its parasitic response to a national tragedy. ·

John McNally, author of "America's Report Card," teaches at Wake Forest University.