Child Finder: Revelation, the third in award-winning novelist Mike Angley’s Child Finder Trilogy, lives up the promise of its two predecessors and then trots another mile down the road. Back are the protagonists readers have come to know and love―synesthetic psychic Pat O’Donnell and family, John Helmsley, General Swank, and Woody Davis. This time, the good-guy cast includes such luminaries as the President of the United States and the Pope. The antagonists aren’t just any old kidnappers or run of the mill psychopaths. Lurking stage left is North Korea’s Dear Leader and his minions. At stake are the lives of two precocious, psychic little girls―twin daughters of the US Ambassador to South Korea.
Like Angley’s prior volumes, Revelation is filled with secrets―codes, equipment, paint, airplanes, weapons, abilities, and adventures. The characters are both tough and sensitive. Their stories explore the usual thriller theme―good and evil. Their battles are cataclysmic, their issues primeval. It’s the stuff of superhero action movies with dark undertones.
Don’t let the drama fool you.
Angley’s story explores politics and religion with the same sense of fun and what’s-under-the-lid excitement as Steven Spielberg did with Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. Who are these girls? Why do they matter so much that the President is willing to risk Pat―an important resource for the US (and all mankind)? Why do they matter so much that the Vatican gets involved? They are so cute, so sweet―so adorable. But they are just little girls―aren’t they?
Readers are seldom treated to such a clever, thoughtful and intriguing tale. The suspense takes two forms―action and philosophy. I mean it―philosophy. Not just the who, what, when and where of things, but the why. For those of us who seldom go through a day without pondering the mysteries of life, Angley’s sojourn into alternate possibilities is delightful. In particular, I love the short discussion about fiction toward the end of the piece. I have always found fiction to be the more eloquent genre―because the author is free to interpret his message―and to offer his version of the world to the reader as entertainment. Angley’s coy suggestion that the classified Level 4 secrets revealed to Pat O’Donnell are really true makes the reader chuckle but five minutes after finishing the book, persistent thoughts tease the cerebellum like feathers tickle the nose. Could it be? Let’s see what Google does say about The Speech of the Unknown….Hmmm. Read More →
