Scavenger - Hardcover

Morrell, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1593154410 ISBN 13: 9781593154417

Publisher: Vanguard Press, 2007

Synopsis

David Morrell’s Creepers was a publishing event in 2005, a powerful, edgy, dark thriller by a master of the genre. A New York Times best-seller, it won the prestigious Bram Stoker Award and earned numerous critical raves. Scavenger, Morrell’s latest novel, takes us in a harrowing new direction: a desperate high-tech scavenger hunt for a 100-year-old time capsule. Frank Balenger, the resolute but damaged hero of Creepers, now finds himself trapped in a nightmarish game of fear and death. To save himself and the woman he loves, he must play by the rules of a god-like Game Master with an obsession for unearthing the past. But sometimes the past is buried for a reason. Scavenger is a brilliant, frightening hunter-hunted tale that layers modern technology over the dusty artifacts of earlier times. The result is a surreal palimpsest, one that contains the secret of survival for Balenger and a handful of unwilling players who race against the game’s clock to solve the puzzle of the time capsule, only to discover that time is the true scavenger. Morrell’s trademark action sequences are embedded with fascinating historical clues that make Scavenger a thrill-a-minute page-turner as well as a mesmerizing literary experience.

About this title

About the Author

David Morrell is the New York Times bestselling author of twenty-eight books, including his award-winning Creepers. Co-president of the International Thrillers Writers Organization, he is considered by many to be the father of the modern action novel. David resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Reviews

This unwieldy thriller from bestseller Morrell (First Blood) becomes so caught up in its headlong action that it never stops to explore the possibilities of its intriguing premise. Frank Balenger, the emotionally banged-up hero of the Stoker Award–winning Creepers (2005), finds he must play an elaborate...game to save himself and his lover, blonde, blue-eyed Amanda Evert, who reminds him so much of his late wife. The nefarious Adrian Murdock, a history professor at Atlanta's Oglethorpe University and a member of the Time Capsule Society, sends the pair on a hunt through time that keeps them in constant danger as they attempt to discover the secret of a series of time capsules. While Morrell delivers race-against-the-clock thrills with his usual aplomb and does a good job educating the reader about actual time capsules, the minimal characterization makes it hard to care about Balenger and Amanda. Video gamers will be most satisfied.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

*Starred Review* Ex-cop Frank Balenger, introduced in Creepers (2005), returns for an even, well, creepier adventure. While attending a lecture about time capsules, Frank mysteriously blacks out. When he awakens, he discovers that the lecture was a ruse, and his girlfriend, Amanda, is missing. Turns out a fiendish puppet master is playing a deadly game with Frank and Amanda (and an assortment of other people), and the key to winning the game--and staying alive--is, like a time capsule, buried somewhere in the past. This is just a wonderful novel, a near-perfect balance of thriller, horror, and historical mystery. Balenger, the deeply troubled hero (his wife was murdered, and this is the second time Amanda has been kidnapped), is one of those characters you want to spend more time with, just to figure out what makes him tick, and (without divulging any of the novel's secrets) the villain is full of interesting surprises. Morrell has a reputation for smart, tightly written, genre-bending fiction, but here he exceeds himself, producing a superbly entertaining novel that will attract readers from multiple genres. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Vanguard Press
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1593154410
• ISBN 13: 9781593154417
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 349