This way madness lies

The writer who once referred to the National Security Agency as “the puzzle palace” should turn his attention to Amazon.com and some of the features it puts on its book pages.

Though I’ve been warned against paying attention to the Amazon sales rankings by my agent, my publicist and even a few editors, I find myself checking in once a day to see where The Last Three Miles has placed. I don’t have to tell you that my ranking isn’t going to cause J.K. Rowling any sleepless nights, but the rise and fall of my book does seem to correspond to — well, something. Today it’s back in the upper reaches of the five-digit club; some days it plummets into the six-digit level. Since the glacial pace of publishing means it will be weeks before I get hard numbers on how well the book is selling, these Amazon numbers have become as interesting to me as they are inscrutable. At this rate I’m going to be reading pigeon entrails.

The other enigma is the Amazon categorization system. This morning, The Last Three Miles is listed in the “Mid-Atlantic” category, right behind Satan’s Circus by Mike Dash and just ahead of Peter Hamill’s love song to Manhattan. (In your face, Hamill! Boo-yah!) Not bad company. But it’s also listed under “Conspiracy Theories,” which is funny because the only theories touched upon in the book involve highway engineering. And the other books are a pretty mixed bag, too: Roswell flying-saucer tomes and titles that read like leftover chapters from the Illuminatus! trilogy, alongside Steve Coll’s magnificent Ghost Wars and Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. But any list that puts my book alongside Shakespeare is fine by me.