A stand-alone satiric thriller from New York City literary icon Arthur Nersesian. “Nersesian easily captures the quirks of Tennessee, from sweet mom-and-pop storefronts to dingy, cluttered trailer parks; he sounds eager to stretch those regional muscles, after eight novels set in caustic New York . . . Mesopotamia is a solid, absurdist mystery. It’s a vacation from the cosmopolitan, for both its heroine and its author―and, just like the tabloids it skewers, a sensationalist retreat for the reader.” ― Village Voice “This wild and wildly entertaining novel [is] a satirical thriller with a tabloid touch that revels in the low-rent colorfulness of its characters.” ― Library Journal Things have not been going well for journalist Sandy Bloomgarten. Her job went down the drain and her marriage quickly followed. After a lengthy bender, she awakens one morning to the stark realization that she is flat broke. Nonetheless, she’s still a crack reporter and when a tabloid offers her a freelance assignment in Memphis, just a stone’s throw from her childhood home in Mesopotamia, Tennessee, she takes it. Though sent there for one story, she winds up tracking down another: someone is killing Elvis impersonators who perform at the annual Sing-the-King festival. The few clues lead her to several unlikely characters: a cheating local minister constantly on the make; a strange band of misfits who only cover Elvis tunes; a small-town private eye who blew himself up along with his crystal meth lab. As Sandy’s investigation closes, she realizes that she is sitting on what could be the story of the century. The only problem is she can never reveal what she has found. Nersesian’s latest novel, set largely in Tennessee, is a satiric thriller that takes an amusing view of America’s predilection with the superficial over the relevant, and celebrity excitement over real news. "The immortal shadow of Elvis Presley gyrates wildly through this satiric exploration of America’s fascination with tabloid journalism. " ― Publishers Weekly "Thoroughly entertaining . . . A quirky, hard-edged, slightly absurdist thriller from a writer who definitely bears watching. " ― Booklist ARTHUR NERSESIAN is the author of fourteen books, including the cult-classic national bestseller  The Fuck-Up  (more than 100,000 copies sold),  Suicide Casanova, Manhattan Loverboy, East Village Tetralogy, and  Mesopotamia . He is a native New Yorker who runs a writing workshop in the East Village and can be reached on Facebook. His latest work is  The Five Books of (Robert) Moses. MESOPOTAMIA By Arthur Nersesian Akashic Books Copyright © 2010 Arthur Nersesian All right reserved. ISBN: 978-1-936070-08-4 Chapter One ... those were all the suicides that I could remember, all sad males (as I envisioned in tabloid headlines—an occupational hazard of working in this business). Women tend to be more passive in their self-annihilation. Accidental overdoses gradually slowing down their broken little hearts. Repeatedly peeking into ovens, à la Sylvia Plath, where the gas delicately overwhelms the oxygen and their last thoughts are regretting not using a better oven cleaner. Stressful jobs, loveless marriages, bad food—most people kill themselves slowly every day. When I got fired from my marriage and divorced from my job, I found myself getting drunk and passing out too early. Then I'd wake up around two in the morning with only the unbearable emptiness of my miserable failure to keep me company. That was when I started with the sleeping pills. None of this had anything to do with the seemingly happy, successful life of one Thucydides Scrubbs. His comely young wife Missy was probably too dumb to kill herself. At thirty-eight years old the African American tax attorney probably slept as soundly as the dead. At least he slept well until that fateful day in July 2005 when he returned to his posh two-million-dollar estate outside of Memphis, Tennessee, to find his allegedly pregnant, white teenage bride, Missy Scrubbs, missing. Four days after her disappearance, her mother notified the police. When they asked Thucydides why he didn't call them, he replied that he simply thought she was visiting some friends upstate. Apparently she was from some podunk town between Memphis and Nashville, and this was where I started paying attention as I was raised in that very same area. When the police examined Thucydides's bank records, they discovered that a million dollars had been withdrawn from his account a few days before she vanished. He had no explanation and was an automatic suspect. When they learned from the neighbors that Thucydides and his wife had been fighting on a regular basis, the police considered he might have used that money to hire a hit man. But a murder didn't cost nearly that much. Some hypothesized that it might be a kidnapping. If that was the case, then Thucydides had probably been warned that if he involved the police, lit