Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S.

Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice-for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Sluggish action, lukewarm gore, and a very familiar story, studded with what-if dialogue.Īre we not men? We are-well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).Ī zombie apocalypse is one thing. But why? Is ransom money the only thing the killer wants? Who’ll be next? Lindsay’s lover, Sheriff Wyatt Metcalf, is tied up to a nice, sharp guillotine to await his ghastly fate. After a frantic search through mineshafts and whatnot (where is Lassie when you need her?) and dithering over maps and motivation, Lucas and Sam arrive too late to save feisty young cop Lindsay Graham, who was left to drown in the killer’s lair. Ignoring the scoffers and naysayers, they join forces to find an elusive serial kidnapper and killer with a taste for slow torture and lingering death. In different ways, they both read minds, though ESP hardly seems necessary to figure out this predictable plot. Samantha Burke is a fortuneteller who travels with a circus Lucas Jordan works for the FBI’s elite Special Crime Unit. Psychics crack a case-in the first in the Fear trilogy, by Hooper ( Haunting Rachel, 1998, etc.).

Hunting Fear by Kay Hooper