Has
Tim Green really been writing for over a decade? AMERICAN OUTRAGE,
his 12th novel, is arguably his most interesting and challenging
work to date. The former host of "A Current Affair" uses the
experience of working for a TV newsmagazine to great advantage in
this book.


Jake Carlson is a successful, though aging, television commentator
with an instantly recognizable countenance and a life that most
people dream about. However, he is privately reeling, having
recently suffered the loss of his wife to cancer. Meanwhile, his
adopted son, Sam, is acting out, partially in reaction to his
mother's death. Carlson is drinking a bit too much and missing
assignments too often for an anchor who is rapidly approaching
middle age.


To make matters more complicated, Sam asks his foster dad to use
considerable resources to find his birth parents. Carlson knows
next to nothing about Sam's origins, having obtained Sam through an
adoption agency that had informed him they specialized in placing
orphaned Albanian children.


As Carlson delves into Sam's background, the story begins to
unravel. The agency that Carlson and his wife used is out of
business, the owner apparently having committed suicide. When
Carlson starts asking questions, he receives anonymous warnings
telling him to back off his investigation. It's not long before
Carlson finds himself on a collision course not only with the
Albanian mob but also with one of America's oldest and most
powerful families --- which appears to have an unexpected tie to
Sam as well.


AMERICAN OUTRAGE starts off a bit slowly, but patient readers will
be rewarded in the second half, which contains some of the best
writing Green has ever done. He drops a number of surprises
throughout --- one of the biggest at the halfway point, when he
unexpectedly takes a major character piece off the board --- and as
the closing pages fly by, it's anyone's guess as to how things will
end. This is a strong work by one of the more consistently
dependable authors.