Jack Fish by J. Milligan
pub. by Soho Press, 220 pp., $10.00
Another book about water in the midst of a trend which seems to be something to which all of us should probably pay attention.
Politically speaking, water will soon prove more vital than oil. Water shortages, lack of water, the need for water, all seem to loom large above the plotlines of a number of recent books. Jack Fish is a protagonist who actually comes from the water. He is a secret agent acting on behalf of the Elders of Atlantis, and he washes up on the beach at Coney Island, Brooklyn somewhat unclear as to what his exact mission is. He knows that he is supposed to find and kill a rogue agent named Victor Sargasso. Other than that, Jack cannot remember.
Nor can he easily breathe -- that being a skill only slowly and fitfully learned "up top." Nonetheless, Jack becomes an effective and fearless topside agent. He is like a James Bond with gills, a literary device of such simplicity and brilliance that one is surprised to be finding it for the first time. Eventually, Jack learns to breathe and to drink liquor and to dance and to navigate the 5 boroughs and to talk his way into a nightclub.
Jack's attempts at finding Sargasso allow the author to take his reader on a whirlwind (and decidedly satiric) tour through modern New York City. There are lesbian performance artists, punk rock nightclubs. freelance hitmen, dealers, stalkers, hookers and thieves. The Brooklyn topography is accurately rendered even as the plot spins off into unbelievability. The black humor saves a book that might otherwise be considered a mere curiousity. The great James Elroy calls this book "a wild ride" and who am I to contradict him? As a first effort, "Jackfish" indicates there may be great things ahead coming from J. Milligan.