Some Love for THE ZERO

One of the hardest thing for a story to do is hook the reader from the very beginning. There's no point in having action at the end of the book if the reader is gonna throw it out after the first chapter. Well, Jess Walter must've had a really good English teacher somewhere in his life. He (yea, it's a guy named Jess) starts out THE ZERO with the main character waking up from shooting himself in the head. With that kind of intro, it's pretty hard not to keep reading. After one page I was already sympathizing with the character and interested in what was going on in his head (ouch, sorry, that was unintentional). I'm guessing that's what Jess was goin for.