The Zero Game - Brad Meltzer

*** - Fast-paced and set in the political world of Congress, The Zero Game was an engrossing political thriller - plenty of danger lurking and narrow escapes. Fun for the genre, but it's not one of my favorites.

Two political staffers in Washington, D.C. are caught up in a mysterious secret game - a theoretically harmless bet on peripheral issues going through Congress. The Zero Game ends up causing the death of one of Harris Sandler's good friends, so Harris goes into hiding. Soon he and a Congressional page find themselves on the run from a dangerous assassin as they try to discover the secret behind the game that people are willing to kill for.

The Zero Game was pretty much what you would expect from a political thriller. It was fast-paced and engrossing - you never had to wait too long for the next danger to pop up around the corner. There was quite a bit of running around the Capitol trying to escape from bad guys. I kind of hoped the characters would venture a little farther afield. I miss living in DC, and it would have been nice to spend some time revisiting familiar areas.

The shifting points of view had its good points and bad. It certainly adds to some of the surprise, but it also was a bit disconcerting to the reader. I don't like getting attached to one narrator only to switch to someone else. I also just didn't get much out of the sections from the killer's point of view. They didn't add anything much to the story - not even a sense of impending danger that the protagonists were unaware of. To add to that, I could have used a bit more in the way of contribution from the page. She was an interesting character, and I would have liked to see more from her.

I enjoyed the ultimate mystery and how it was set up, and the show-down wasn't disappointing. But, as with most of these types of thrillers, there was nothing about the mystery that was particularly memorable.