"Woke up this morning... had a blue moon... a blue moon in my eyes."

Baby Boomers now live on the far side of our Sell-By dates. We quote Leonard Cohen on important birthdays.

"Got a blue moon... blue moon in my eyes." Whatever that means.

The other day I sat with a book saleslady and both of us had a senior moment at the same time. It WAS pathetic. It took me another day to remember what we both forgot, and I've almost forgotten it again. Just when I was becoming a wise old man.

Age Doesn't Matter Unless You're a Cheese, reads the title of one popular gift book. In younger days I was an unaged cheddar, but these days I'm blue and smelly.

I spent my 61st doing all the important things one does on one's birthday: Laundry, dishes, groceries. Also reading. A rich life.

I finished off a vegan thriller this week: The Ethical Assassin by Edgar Award winning author David Liss. This is a strange book, and strangely interesting, too. By the end of the novel I knew almost too much about animal rights and too little about the characters.

David Liss made his reputation with two historical novels set in 18th century London. A Conspiracy of Paper won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel when it was published six years ago. The sequel, A Spectacle of Corruption takes the lead character, a Jewish ex-boxer, through a near-death experience escaping the gallows and a system that wants to find him guilty of murder.

His latest book is a contemporary adventure. Again, the lead character is a hapless Jew. Lemuel Altick is earning money for college by selling encyclopedias door to door in the trailer parks of deepest 1980's Florida.

There's lots to like here, and lots to stumble over. Lemuel's hapless adventures are funny and scary. Then there are the vivid descriptions of diseased and half-crazed factory-farmed pigs. These sections are truly distressing. But too frequently the author stops everything for a speech on factory farms or a half-page class on Ethics 101.

The bad guys are almost laughably crooked. The corruption literally stinks. The knee-trembling odor of the sheriff's methadone lab is almost covered by the stomach-churning smell of the sheriff's pig factory.

Liss describes it quite well: "Waste lagoon turned out to be a euphemism, and when your euphemism has the word 'waste' in it, you're starting from a pretty bad place. I found not a lagoon but a ditch, the worst, most horrible ditch I could ever have imagined, maybe three hundred feet in diameter... My head grew light, my steps unbalanced... It was a brown pond of viscous sludge that undulated its bloated waves against the slick shoreline... A seething nimbus of insects hovered above, buzzing with mutant menace."

If this was a novel by Carl Hiassen you'd KNOW someone's going into that lagoon before the novel's over. But it's David Liss on a mission, so first you are going to be lectured on factory farms and cruelty to animals. THEN he'll throw someone in the lagoon.

Liss credits animal rights activists and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals for helping educate him about issues of animal cruelty.

A publisher publicist puts it this way: "David's extensive research on the meat industry for The Ethical Assassin -- including clandestine meetings with radical activists -- led him to make a serious lifestyle change."

The other book I'm currently reading is concerned with the same issues. Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma is not also trying to be a murder mystery, and it's all the better for that.

It's clear that Liss was moved and changed by the things he discovered in his research. Irritatingly for those in search of a good story, his lectures get in the way.

The ethical assassin of the book's title is always saying things like "Chinese restaurants are great for vegetarians... They tend to have lots of nonmeat options, and they don't traditionally cook with dairy."

Sure. Right. Now, can we get back please to throwing the sheriff into the waste lagoon while we're still young?

Oops. Too late for that.

Aired Sunday March 26, 2006 at 10:55 am and Monday March 27, 2006 at 8:40 am

Orders/Information:

The Ethical Assassin by David Liss. Ballantine Books hardcover $24.95. ISBN 140006421X.

A Conspiracy of Paper by David Liss. Ballantine paperback $14.95. ISBN 0304119120. Edgar Award for Best First Novel.

A Spectacle of Corruption by David Liss. Ballantine paperback $14.95. ISBN 037576089X.

The Omnivore's Dilemma, A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan. Penguin Press hardcover due April, 2006. Hardcover $26.95. ISBN 1594200823.