Humans

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0446400947 ISBN 13: 9780446400947

Publisher: Mysterious Press, 1993

Disillusioned with His own creation, God has decided to wipe humanity out for good, but the rag-tag collection of human misfits His chief angel has selected to trigger the Apocalypse will endanger this divine plan. Reprint.

About the Author:

DONALD E. WESTLAKE has written numerous novels over the past thirty-five years under his own name and pseudonyms, including Richard Stark. Many of his books have been made into movies, including The Hunter, which became the brilliant film noir Point Blank, and the 1999 smash hit Payback. He penned the Hollywood scripts for The Stepfather and The Grifters, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay. The winner of three Edgar awards and a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master, Donald E. Westlake was presented with The Eye, the Private Eye Writers of America's Lifetime Achievement Award, at the Shamus Awards. He lives with his wife, Abby Adams, in rural New York State.

From Publishers Weekly:

A bored God sends the angel Ananayel to earth to "announce, and to effect, the end of the World" in Westlake's first venture into science fiction. Fed up with humanity, the Supreme Being wants the earth done with once and for all, but helc per chicago doesn't want to do the job himself. Better, God thinks, in his paradoxical, ineffable way, to let humans take care of it themselves, of their own infamous free will. It is Ananayel's task to nudge the necessary actors into place so that they will choose a course that brings about destruction. One by one the angel recruits a lonely young New York woman, a failing victim of the Chernobyl accident, a Chinese student activist, a vengeful former singer from Brazil, a Kenyan prostitute and a good-natured petty thief, and he encourages them none too subtly toward a critical showdown at a nuclear power plant in upstate New York. Satan, meanwhile, has been enjoying the antics of humanity, and sends an emissary of his own to block Ananayel's plot and save the world. Westlake evokes--both humorously and bitterly--the loneliness and hopelessness that color the human condition, posing the age-old question of what makes life worth living despite so much evil. Though he treats this issue only shallowly, Westlake ( Drowned Hopes ; A Likely Story ) lifts his tale with snappy prose and sympathetic characters.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.