The Wrong Publisher

The Wrong Abraham, the new thriller from local novelist David S. Brody, has a cast of characters that would make the Marquis de Sade wince: the neo-Nazi who brutalizes an old lady visiting her husband’s grave; the female butcher who helps a doctor castrate a man in the back of a van; the mad giant who sings ditties while enacting horrible violence; the terrorist cell hatching a plot to cook Boston to a crisp.

The narrator, meanwhile, mostly withholds judgment on this motley bunch. Certainly nobody in the book gets picked apart quite like a guy named Burt, publisher of the Alternative, an arts and entertainment weekly in Boston who is variously described as a “nerd,” a “runt,” a “barnacle,” a “schmuck,” and a “dweeb who did not know the first thing about style or cool or trendy.” Burt’s married to a high-profile Hispanic woman whose image takes a few hair-raising shots as well.

Bostonians who think they see the sketch of a local media figure here are apparently mistaken. “I’ve got axes to grind, but he’s not one of them,” says Brody, referring to Stephen Mindich, the well-known founder of the Boston Phoenix and husband of Judge Maria Lopez.

Coincidence, then. Okay. Right.