Truth Tastes Like Pennies (2026)
Timothy Splashinski is a janitor. He is not a scientist, a lawyer, or a person anyone should listen to.
He is, however, the only one who noticed the otters.
Two of them. Behind the glass at the Happy Waves Aquarium. Arranging rocks into shapes rocks do not fall into on their own. Solving puzzles built to be unsolvable. Watching him back.
Timothy has documented all of it. Eight hundred and forty-seven pages, by hand, on his own time, for free. Nobody asked him to. Nobody ever does.
Then a disgraced FBI agent who can taste when people are lying tells him the otters are real. So does an efficiency consultant the Army discharged for being right too often. So does fifty-three years of government paperwork that everyone denied existed, right up until the morning the internet found it.
What follows is a break-in, a trial, a hung jury, and a federal program nobody will admit to. Also seventeen children who should still be alive.
It’s a comedy. Mostly.
A satirical novel about consciousness, conspiracy, institutional cowardice, and two otters named Olive and Otis who are smarter than the people deciding their future.
You’ll love this if you:
Believe the people in charge are the least qualified people in the room
Want dark comedy with actual stakes beneath the absurdity
Think whistleblowers deserve better lawyers and funnier novels
Have ever filed a complaint that went into a drawer nobody reads
Are ready for absurdist fiction that trusts your intelligence
Timothy documented everything. Now everyone will have to listen.
For readers of Christopher Moore, Carl Hiaasen, and anyone who suspects the government conspiracy most worth exposing involves two very patient otters in Ohio.
(Available in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle.)
