Crota: A Novel

Sheriff Skip Harding and Jay Little Hawk discover that their shared history has bound them together once again as they battle a terrifying and mysterious force and an awakening ancient evil, in a magical tale blending elements of mystery, suspense, and Native American mythology. A first novel.

The energy of a grade-B monster movie pervades Goingback's debut novel. So do that genre's cliches, including the tired theme of the Indian curse. When Hobbs County, Mo., is besieged by the Crota-a brain-munching, bone-crunching bogey of Creek mythology-familiar characters surface: Jay Little Hawk, the Native American game warden who knows the creature's history and vulnerabilities; Skip Harding, the local sheriff whose reacquaintance with his own Native American roots is the linchpin for defeating the Crota; and a host of faceless types who appear just long enough to become the monster's prey. Goingback puts all of them through predictable paces in a novel that's little more than a standard chase-and-capture scenario played out above and below the ground of the small town of Logan. The narrative high points are the accounts of Indian history and legend, which have the flavor of the authentic oral tradition. These clash with descriptive prose that would have been stale in the days of the pulps (a stewardess has "a pair of legs that seemed to go on forever"), but Goingback keeps the action brisk and knows where to put the necessary lucky coincidence or happy twist to distract readers from his tale's unwavering simplicity.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A first novel about an ancient monster that emerges from beneath the earth to terrorize a Missouri small town. Some shift in a faultline has awakened the monster, which is huge and demonlike, with evil-seeming eyes. It looks something like a bear and has the skin and slithering capability of a reptile. And it's hungry. First, it kills a teenage boy on the way to pick up his date, then the man who discovers him. Then it devours a herd of cattle and the farmer who tries to defend them- -giving rise to cattle mutilation stories among the locals. Bullets won't stop the monster, because it's really a demon. Only magic will work: Goingback, who is Choctaw, pits Jay Little Hawk against the demon, but even he, with all of his hunting lore, must consult with an old shaman to divine just what the demon is and how it can be killed. Little Hawk joins with the local sheriff, Skip Harding, who did battle with the demon and lived to tell the tale, and together the two bring the thing down with a magic, stone-pointed arrow. All of which is extremely similar to--though far less imaginative than--last summer's Christian crossover, Frank Peretti's The Oath. Goingback is readable and his Choctaw lore appealing. But his story quickly drops into the banal suspense of a Dean Koontz or Clive Barker. He isn't, however, any worse. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.