Dr. No by Percival Everett

Consider the slide whistle. Reading this book was like being in that sound, a wild, giddy, glorious swoop. The mathematician Wala Kitu is an expert in the study of nothing; his closest friend is a pragmatic one-legged dog named Trigo who offers wise counsel in Wala’s dreams. He needs it, especially once he is pulled into the orbit of John Milton Bradley Sill, a Black billionaire and aspiring Bond villain seeking to steal nothing (it’s stored at Fort Knox) to harness its awesome power against the United States, a country that has never given Black folks anything and deserves nothing in return. When Wala’s colleague, the naive topology specialist Eigen Vector (lol) stumbles into Sill’s clutches, he slowly begins to realize working for Sill might be a mistake, especially after Sill feeds one of his henchmen to sharks. Oh, and there is also a lunkhead government agent named Bill Clinton on their trail. Graywolf Press describes this as “a caper with teeth,” and whoever wrote that line of copy should get a raise, because unlike 94.73% of book promotion verbiage, it is exactly right. Laugh-out-loud funny and a satisfying delight, esp. if you like to read for the experience of rattling around inside someone else’s fearsomely clever and capacious brain. Who knew nothing could be so much fun?