As "The Book of the Lam" opens, psychocomic antihero Billy Henderson is on the lam in a car on the open highway, spiraling downward. With no real plan except to land at the bottom, he zigzags across the country, through California, the Great Southwest, New York, the South, and beyond, littering the terrain.Sean Abbott of Random House has called "The Book of the Lam" 'a fine rampage through the American scene."