The Jehovah Contract
by Victor Koman
Review by James J. Walton

Del Ammo is a highly skilled and highly paid assassin who specializes in removing dictators, politicians and other undesirables. As a cover he keeps an office in a seedy section of post apocalyptic Los Angeles and hires himself out as a private detective, peeking through windows and sorting through garbage.

Ammo's section of Los Angeles is seedy due to the detonation of a small nuclear device which destroyed a single building. (Gang warfare is very sophisticated.) The resulting radiation permeated the building where Ammo's office is located so rents are very low.

Ammo is dying from a particularly nasty form of bone cancer brought on by the aforementioned radiation, but he is so world weary the news that he has but a short time to live is something of a relief.

When a very dapper man steps into Ammo's office to offer him an assignment, Ammo at first tells the client to go elsewhere. The man is very persuasive so Ammo decides to let him finish and is intrigued. The man, a well known television evangelist, wants Ammo to hunt down and kill God. As a retainer, the man miraculously removes all traces of the cancer from Ammo's body.

Whether he believes or not, someone takes Ammo's case very seriously and sets out to kill Ammo before he can complete the assignment. Of course now Ammo is determined to do his best, and the fun begins.

Ammo isn't forced to go it alone. Along the way he meets a 16 year old virgin prostitute who is also a broadcasting telepath, an ancient Gypsy crone with strange powers and an appetite for handsome men, and a very beautiful woman who can walk through security nets without being noticed.

Aided by this trinity of unlikely females, Ammo hunts for his quarry by questioning representatives of various religions, reading the works of many philosophers and theologians, and asking people about their perception of God.

The Jehovah Contract is primarily Koman's manifesto outlining his dissatisfaction with religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular.

To his credit, Koman does not beleaguer the point. Most of his arguments are delivered via Ammo's research into the nature and location of God.

The final showdown with God is very anticlimactic. Ammo perceives God as a crazy, bitter, but very powerful, old man filled with resentment for his children.

Does Ammo really kill God? It doesn't matter. Ammo is operating on the theory that since God is such an intangible, no matter which religion, if he can make everyone believe God is dead he will have succeeded.

Or is Ammo delusional? He's had the nasty shock of being told he'll soon die in a very unpleasant manner. Is he still relatively sane? Or has his mind come up with a means for him perpetrate the ultimate revenge?

It is interesting to note that Koman attempted to tap into the Y2K hysteria 16 years early.

Koman showed a bit of optimism in his depiction of the world in the year 2000: space exploration is so far along that it is possible to buy a used space shuttle and the facilities to launch it on the open market.

PULPLESS.com, the publisher of The Jehovah Contract, prides itself in using recycled materials in construction of its books. This is a highly laudable endeavor, but I feel I must express my dissatisfaction with their publishing processes.

At least one quarter of the pages in this particular copy were so badly printed the text literally brushed off. This left blank areas making some parts of the book difficult to read.

Of course I don't know if all copies of this book are so afflicted: if they are, I hope PULPLESS.com addresses the issue quickly and resolves the problem in future editions.


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