Akashic Books, 225 pages, trade paperback, $15.95

“Predictable” would never be a word used to describe an Arthur Nersesian novel.  In his eight previous novels (among them The Fuck-Up, Suicide Casanova, and Unlubricated), outrageous situations and sudden turns of events seem to be everyday situations for his characters.  These unexpected twists and turns of the plot mix with the charismatic voices of his leading characters, leaving readers clutching their books tightly, madly turning pages in anticipation of what will happen next.  His latest novel, Mesopotamia, is no exception.

Mesopotamia tells the story of down-on-her-luck tabloid journalist Sandy Bloomgarten, an alcoholic with a failed marriage and failing career, who sobers up just long enough to accept a freelance assignment to report on the story of a missing teenage bride.  The assignment takes Sandy to Memphis, Tennessee — not far from her childhood home of Mesopotamia, Tennessee, so she decides to use the close proximity to kill two birds with one stone and visit her estranged mother.  On the way back to Memphis after a disastrous visit with her mother, Sandy stumbles across a potentially bigger story than the one she was sent to Tennessee to cover:  someone is stalking the local annual Sing the King festival, murdering Elvis impersonators.  As Sandy immerses herself in digging up facts on the missing bride and trying to solve the serial murder case, she finds herself wrapped up in the lives of the locals around her, one of whom may be the killer.

Sandy’s efforts to scoop the story of the missing bride and to solve the serial Elvis impersonator murders quickly entwine to become the primary plot thread running throughout the novel, but they are not the only drama keeping the reader turning pages.  In a compact space (237 pages), Nersesian finds room to comment on subjects as diverse as suicide, the ongoing war in Iraq, global warming,  adoption and family conflict, and other topics through the perspective of his first person narrator/protagonist Sandy, the characters around her, and the situations in which Sandy finds herself.  Nersesian seamlessly weaves these topics into the subplots of the story, adding depth to the protagonist and turning the drama up a notch.

The Sandy character is one of Nersesian’s most interesting first person narrators, rivaling Suicide Casanova’s Leslie Cauldwell, though not as dark or sexually depraved.  Both novels open with their respective narrator waxing philosophic, and the deep and abstract thoughts they share turn out to be greatly revealing as they link deeply to their characters and the plots of their stories.  This is clearly the case in the opening paragraph of Mesopotamia, and its related facing page, and it gives us an interesting insight into Sandy’s character.  The facing page is a faux tabloid page, which demonstrates Sandy’s habit of envisioning events happening around her as tabloid headlines.  She describes this in the first paragraph as “an occupational hazard of working in this business.”  Immediately we are pulled into the story, knowing bits about the narrator’s personality, occupation, and perhaps a bit about her current mental state, (i.e., possibly considering suicide), and are compelled to keep reading.

Since the debut of his first novel 20 years ago, Nersesian has built a devoted following.  Mesopotamia is poised to be the novel that helps him break out to a larger audience.  It easily ranks with Suicide Casanova and The Fuck Up as one of his best works, and serves as a great introduction to an often offbeat but always entertaining author.