Wireless

Plot

The scene is the decaying New England factory town of Quinsigamond, a place fixed permanently on the American literary map by Jack O'Connell's resoundingly acclaimed first novel, Box Nine. Now, in Wireless, events spin ever further into late-twentieth-century chaos.The action starts when an activist priest meets a grisly death within his own cathedral. The crime has all the earmarks of a gang killing from Bangkok Park, congregating point for prostitutes and pimps, musclemen, drug sellers, and crack dealers. In fact, the perp is a demented ex-FBI agent named Speer, who has arrived in Quinsigamond in search of the "jammers" - particularly the infamous O'Zebedee Brothers - who have been hijacking local radio airwaves with their singular brand of subversive diatribes.Succeeding to the uncontested overseership of Bangkok Park is Detective Hannah Shaw. Following in the footsteps of a predecessor described as "the original strong-arm goddess with the will of Stalin and a tongue like a razor," Shaw is growing ever more comfortable with the nuances of casual brutality. She tracks Speer's enraged quest leading him to Wireless, the funky retro-radio nightclub and the epicenter of the diverse jammer subculture. The jammers include Flynn, peacemaker, bankroller, father figure; Wallace and Olga, midgets, ballroom dancers extraordinaire, mischievous airwave pirates; Hazel, renegade leader of a would-be terrorist splinter group; Gabe, the mulatto teen with a bad lisp, no family, and a megahertz crush on Hazel; and Ronnie, d.j. and diva of Libido Liveline, the on-air column for the lustlorn. They all become prey of the defrocked Fed in his murderous campaign of censorship.If Joseph Wambaugh, Stephen King, and Lewis Carroll were to collaborate on a crime novel, the result might well resemble Wireless. With all the explosive brilliance displayed in his award-winning first novel, Jack O'Connell again provides a terrifying and strangely enthralling glimpse into the dark heart of our expiring century.