I've been chewing up novels lately. Spare Change by Robert B Parker, The Good Guy by Dean Koontz, Bad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child, etc.
I know I wrote a brief opinion on Scavenger earlier, but here's a full length review that should be published in a Yakutat (Alaska!) newspaper this week.
BTW and irrelevant - I gag at the sight of the pic on the sidebar. I really neeed to update that.
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Scavenger
By David Morrell
349 pages
Vanguard Press, $24.95
Few novelists have had a career as long and successful as David Morrell. The award winning author of 28 novels and self described 'father of the modern action novel', he can also boast of creating one of fiction's most recognizable characters: John Rambo of First Blood.
Morrell's reputation is spelled out in praise from the likes of Stephen King, Michael Conelly, and Lee Child on the dustjacket for his newest book.
' . . . crack open another instant classic,' one loving blurb reads.
Not quite.
In Scavenger Morrell brings back Frank Balenger, the hero of 2005's Creepers. Frank is now romantically involved with Amanda, the woman he rescued in the previous book. No sooner do they grow comfortable then she is kidnapped and awakens to find herself at the mercy of the Game Master, an unseen enemy who manipulates a group of six people into locating a 100 year old time capsule. They have 48 hours to do so, and refusing his wishes isn't an option.
Meanwhile Frank is on a quest of his own, to find both the Game Master and Amanda, all the while with the police viewing him with suspicion and another unknown enemy doing her best to stop him.
At times Morrell seems so intent on keeping pace with the plot's 48 hour deadline that any true focus or intent is lost. Like Creepers, Scavenger has a premise worthy of a good dustjacket sales pitch; a historical mystery, a relatively obscure but fascinating obsession (in this case, geocaching), an established hero, and a creepy bad guy.
What it doesn't have is a plot more developed than that of a network TV show, characters worthy of emotional attachment, or a satisfying resolution.
Morrell has never been known for delving deeply into the souls of his characters, preferring to let the action speak for itself, and Scavenger is no exception. Most of the time this method works just fine, as there is little need for psychoanalysis while traipsing through the mountains with a madman on your heels.
It's only when the characters react out of some unexplored but overpowering urge that the method fails. One of the men subjected to the Game Master's perverse, Saw-like gameplay acts out in ways that scream for an explanation longer than a mere sentence or two. Because Morrell fails to provide that information, the actions seem out of sorts and contrived.
The rationale behind the Game Master is the only legitimate attempt to explain a character's behavior, and sadly this too fails, mired in an over-the-top comic book explanation.
Like Creepers, Morrell ends the novel with an author's note, this time stretching for more than ten pages. Ordinarily a glimpse into an author's mind would be a satisfying and welcome end to a great read. In this case, however, it comes off as little more than an extended and self-serving rationale for a failed project.
Scavenger is fine for a brief and disposable summer read, but an 'instant classic' it is not.
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