INHUMAN
BEINGS
by Jerry Jay Carroll
Ace, 1998 249 pgs. $13.00 (tp)
Private detective Goodwin Armstrong has a problem. He doesn't know if his
client -- a San Francisco psychic -- is deluded or if aliens are actually
invading Earth.
When San Francisco psychics start disappearing and dying and the fleabag hotel
he recently vacated is consumed in a suspicious fire, he starts to suspect
something is terribly wrong. Fiery death or mysterious destruction follows
anyone the P.I. contacts. He becomes a fugitive, charged with some of the
suspicious murders that happen in his wake. Armstrong is possibly the only
human who realizes aliens are slowly taking over the power structure of the US.
As a solo freedom fighter, he wages war on the invaders at the facades of
business and politics they've established. A few reluctant co-conspirators help
him along the way. Carroll opens the narrative with his protagonist in
sensory-deprived solitary confinement -- a place Armstrong names the _The
Hole_. In flashback style, the story spools out at a satisfying pace. Jerry Jay
Carroll has written a distinctive noir tale with a unique conclusion.
Recommended.
-- Don Kinney |
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