Scavenger by David Morrell (2007)
David Morrell is considered the "father" of the modern action novel, at least in the mind of his publicist. It all started with First Blood (Rambo) and moved to The Brotherhood of the Rose and other best-selling thrillers (he was a co-founder of the International Thriller Writers organization). He has written 28 novels and four books of non-fiction. He has received Bram Stoker Wards for both Novel and Novella. Morrell received the ThrillerMaster Award from the international Thriller Writers in 2009.
And yet his work tends to elude me, and I have a hard time figuring out why.
Scavenger in a follow-up to his award-winning novel Creepers. In that book, protagonist Frank Balenger. a former cop, who spends more than a year searching for his missing wife, kidnapped by a psychopath who later kidnapped Angela, a woman who could have been the mirror image of Frank's wife. Frank's wife is dead, but he manages to save Angela, although it has left him damaged physically and emotionally, cast adrift and penniless. As Scavenger begins, Fank and Angela cling to esch other, eventually falling in love. In a convenient twist, Frank happens to have a gold coin he found while searching for his wife; the coin is valuable and, by page 8, it nets him two million dollars.
By page 9, Frank and Amanda get an invitation to a lecture at the Manhattan History Club about time capsules. And the novel is off and running.
Frank and Amanda attend the lecture and are drugged. Frank waked up in a different section of New York. Amanda wakes up in Montana with four other people who had been drugged in various parts of the country. The Manhattan History Club never existed. The expert who delivered the lecture never existed. the building where the lecture was held is now an empty shell. Frank has no idea what has been done to Angela. For her part, Angela fears that Frank is dead.
It is all part of an elaborate game, engineered by someone calling himself the "Game Master." Vague clues are left for Frank to following, each one leading him deeper into the game, and each none leading him deeper into danger. A policeman aiding Frank is killed.
In a desolate area of Montana, Amanda and her fellow captives are outfitted in special overalls, boots, headphones, and a GPS device. The five of them have forty hours to play a game, locating the "Sepulcher of Worldly Desires." If they lose their lives are forfeit. If they refuse to play, the suits contain explosives that can be set off by a radio signal from the Game Master. Early on, the Game Master uses the explosives to execute one recalcitrant player. The players musty work together to find hidden GPS coordinates that will led them to other hidden coordinates, and so on. The desolate valley where they are located was once the sire of a mining town, whose people had disappeared under the spell of a religious fanatic (a la Jim Jones and the People's Temple, or Marxhall Applewhite and Heaven's Gate). The Game Master has filled the valley with deadly electrified traps, poisons, hidden bombs, desperate and starving large hounds, and has stocked the lake with thousands of deadly moccasins. Violent rain, snow, deadly cold, and a lack of shelter also challenge Amanda's group.
The Game Master has miscalculated on several fronts. He fully expected to win the game and have all players die. He counted on Frank's PTSD, not realizing that Frank's love for Amanda outweighed his PTSD. He did not count on Amanda's determination and bravery. Still, Frank and Amanda survive only because of flukes and because of the "coincidence theater" in the author's plotting.
We are treated with an overabundance of detail and history about time capsules, geocaching, video games, and game theory. It all serves a purpose, but I have to say, "meh." the exciting parts are truly exciting, the macabre parts are ultra-macabre, and Frank and Amanda are protagonists one can truly cheer for. And the big bad villain and the entire set-up are overly "conic book-y." The rationale behind the plot to me falls into a "I've got a great idea, now what do I do with it?" category of failed experiments. Despite myself, though, the pages kept turning.
Your mileage may differ.
