FICTION
CUSTOMS VIOLATION by Janice Weber (Donald I. Fine: $17.95; 352 pp.). Psychologically arrested at age 10 by his parents’ deaths, U.S. Customs agent Floyd Beck, bemused by today’s mayhem, maladjustment and mammaries, and looking for a girl like Mom, is involved with a beautiful veterinarian so savagely liberated she performs a sex-change operation on a male dog.
Weber has got inside Floyd’s head and we almost believe in him as a man, for she’s daydreamed up a loving, normal guy, loaded with integrity, consideration and warmth. Will he outwit the whole, hilarious megillah of unsmiling liberationists?
U.S. Customs scenes are comically informative. Anyone entering the United States with emeralds embedded in salami had better think twice: They’re on to you!
Almost every line, scene and situation has you laughing. So why does Weber leave you with a lump in the throat?
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