God's Gym

"This second novel from Dutch author and director de Winter (Hoffman's Hunger) is a slick, entertaining import with the soul of an American thriller-fantasy. In the L.A. winter of 2000, Dutch screenwriter Joop Koopman meets with his childhood friend Philip van Gelder, an agent for Israel's Mossad. Using a lucrative script assignment as bait, Philip recruits Joop for an 'undercover job' involving Omar van Lieshout, a suspected Dutch terrorist based in L.A. Meanwhile, Joop's only child, lovely 17-year-old Miriam, suffers severe brain trauma in a motorcycle accident. After Joop consents to have her taken off life support, he finds an unexpected confidante and comforter in the motorcycle driver, Erroll Washington (aka Godzilla), a bulky African-American who runs a karate gym in Venice, Calif. When Joop's distant cousin Linda (a onetime object of Joop's adolescent lust) shows up with a Tibetan monk, things get really strange, involving reincarnation and a secret Swiss bank account. Readers who don't mind swallowing their disbelief should find this imaginative caper propulsive." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

December 22, 2000 is a day of dramatic confluence in the life of Joop Koopman, a Dutchman living in California. It is the day he celebrates his daughter Miriam's seventeenth birthday, meets his old friend Philip - with whom he has been out of touch for eighteen years and who now works for the Israel Ministry of Defense, and crosses paths with Erroll Washington (aka Godzilla) the owner of God's Gym - a Venice health club Miriam frequents. Philip has sought out Joop for reasons that are more than personal, and Joop, in turn, has no choice but to let himself be carried along by political developments that he has previously tried to avoid, but that now inescapably control his life.