by Greg Jenkins

I was having lunch with Dexter DeWitt. This in itself was a questionable activity on my part.' So begins Code Green, whose anti-hero Chip Stone engages in quite a few questionable activities. Stone works as a male nurse in a psychiatric hospital and has almost as many behavioral issues as the residents he cares for. These include DeWitt, a cultural critic gone bonkers; Tim Valentine, who snacks on light bulbs; Philip Nolan, who contends (correctly) that he's a character in a book; and Glinda Moon, an anorexic witch. As the violence at his workplace intensifies, the confused Stone sets out on a desperate but comical odyssey to find his estranged wife - and himself. His wanderings take him through a netherworld where he meets old friends, new enemies and one very unusual sister-in-law. He discovers that the line between the sane and the not-so-sane is more gossamer than even he had suspected. With wild characters and gaudy, entertaining prose, this engaging work offers a bumptious blend of humor and pathos well-suited to the new millenium.