Katastrophe: A Novel - Hardcover

Boyll, Randall

3.27

136 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060192364 ISBN 13: 9780060192365

Publisher: Harper, 2000

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A college faculty party.
An amateur hypnotist.
A lighthearted parlor game.
A shattering revelation
that will change the course of history.

On an ordinary night deep in the heartland of America, two men striving for recognition in the their chosen fields will be thrustinto the national spotlight and become famous beyond their wildest imaginations. One will be celebrated as the journalist who broke the most astonishing story of the century. The other, an unassuming associate professor, will become a hunted man, reviled the world over...

Hank Thorwald is the youngest member of the faculty at Indiana State University. Struggling for a measure of security for his wife, Rebecca, and their daughter, he arrives at the party wanting only to make an impression on the members of his tenure committee.

Alan Weston is a burned-out television reporter whose early promise as a hard-hitting investigative journalist has stalled. The party offers him a chance to see his mentor-the esteemed, eccentric host, psychology professor Perry Wilson-and perhaps regain the confidence that has begun to elude him.

To amuse his guests Perry will hypnotize one of them. He chooses Hank. The game begins with a series of light questions that become more probing as they take Hank further back in time. And then, in a room grown eerily quiet, Hank will make a shocking admission that, at long last, will give Alan Weston the big story he's waited a lifetime for.

Within hours Alan will make Hank a hated and hunted man. Confused and desperate-his family under siege, his life in jeopardy-Hank will go on the run to escape a bizarre and dangerous cabal that believes him to be the torchbearer of an evil legacy they long to revive.

Mesmerizing and ingenious, Katastrophe is both a spellbinding thriller with a stunning conclusion and a surprisingly intimate portrait of a seemingly ordinary man and a family driven to the brink when their world unravels.

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About the Author:

Randall Boyll turned to writing full-time after attending law school in Germany. He lives in Bosie, Idaho.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Deadpan satire, a first hardcover packaged as a serious effort from thriller writer Boyll (Chiller, etc.), featuring an absent-minded academic who fears he's the reincarnated spirit of Adolf Hitler.The morning after perpetually befuddled Indiana State University junior prof Hank Thorwald accompanies his nicotine-addicted wife Rebecca to a quit-smoking-by-hypnosis seminar at a comfortingly bland Terre Haute motel, he discovers he’s fluent in German and doesn’t care much for Jews. In distant Deutschland, Karl-Luther von Wessenheim, a fanatical collector of Nazi memorabilia, becomes intrigued when a rival collector tells him of a cabal hoping to clone Hitler from bones (his remains were never identified at the end of WWII) or a DNA extract from a dandruff flake clinging to the sweatband of Adolf’s old top hat. Back in Indiana, Alan Weston, a sleazy (and Jewish) tabloid TV host who fabricates his Jerry Springer–like expos�s, frequents biker bars, wondering if he’ll ever find the big scoop that will bring back his dwindling TV audience and help him atone for a botched marriage. Weston finds his scoop when he attends a party and sees mesmerizing ISU Professor Perry Wilson hypnotize Thorwald again. After performing a few silly stunts, Thorwald states in German that his real name is Adolf Hitler. An appearance on Weston's TV show proves the fame can be a drag when people Thorwald never met—including von Wessenheim's crackpot crew—assume that that evil is what evil says and that Thorwald’s sudden celebrity is the fulfillment of Hitler’s promise: the Third Reich shall rise again. Bilingual puns, madcap plotting, pop culture send-ups and delightfully dreadful dialogue may annoy readers expecting another Boys from Berlin. “This whole thing is not only preposterous,” one character laments, “but an obvious setup.” Indeed. -- Copyright � 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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