Hitchers

I enjoyed the beginning and end. The start covered a terrorist anthrax attack, a well written car/body of water accident, and scary posession scenarios. I was creeped out/scared during a scene in a doctor's office where young kids showed the possession symptoms. Working the horror stuff into the middle of a plausible terrorist attack was clever. Books don't scare me, but the start of this one did.

The plot then turned more interesting than scary. The characters meeting up and dealing with the supernatural plot line was cool stuff. However, it lost its coolness for me, and turned into quite a few chapters/pages without a goal. There really was no point/plot for a bit. Just a bunch of people reacting to things.

The end picked up. The very show more last page wasn't all that great for me, but the conclusion of the ghosts in the three lead characters was well written. show less

Some time back, I read Will McIntosh's first novel, Soft Apocalypse, and found it fascinating. Like Soft Apocalypse, the narrator of Hitchers is a sensitive young man who seems to be in his late twenties. He’s well-educated, talented, open-minded and not a sexist jackass.

And, in Hitchers, he’s also being taken over by the spirit of his dead grandfather, a cantakerous and bigoted old-style cartoonist. Gramps is none too happy that Finn has taken over—and reinvigorated—his old comic strip.

This novel deals with grief, loss, and moving on—but with an added supernatural twist, given that, following a terrorist attack in Atlanta (Hitchers is set in either a near-future or alternate timeline that, unfortunately, is terrorized in show more ways that have so far only been seen in war zones).

Here’s the best thing of all about McIntosh: It’s character-driven writing that is well-plotted. By that I mean that the story moves quickly and deftly through a well-defined narrative arc, but at each point along the way, it is the well-defined nature of the characters in the story that make it work.

McIntosh is now on the short-list of sci-fi/speculative fiction authors whose books I’ll anticipate.

Reviewed for Sacramento News & Review: http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/bibliolatry/blogs/post?oid=6885133 show less

Not sure how to categorize this -- kinda -- zombie-ish, except not really. A hitcher is a dead person who has popped through a rift between here and the 'transit' zone due to a massive terrorist anthrax attack on Atlanta. The protagonist has been invaded by his grandfather, not a happy combo. His own life has been scarred by several losses, of a twin sister and his wife so he must struggle to find a way to convince his grandfather to let go -- thousands of other Atlantans have been similarly invaded and the quest is to find out how to send the dead on their way. Not my usual fare, but McIntosh is a lively writer with good characters, so I gave it a whirl. ***1/2

In general I really liked this book - really inventive and new premise, and a well-executed and enjoyable read. I'm not sure this one will stick with me as much as the author's first book did (Soft Apocalypse), but it might. There's something about the way he depicts casual murder by armed thugs that's really haunting, which doesn't sound like I'm saying something nice but I do mean it that way.

HOWEVER, as a 20-year Atlanta resident, the inaccuracies regarding the locale drove me NUTS. "Route 285"?!? Really???? Nobody here would ever call it that - locals refer to the highways by their numbers alone. 285, 75, 85, or the Connector. Or the Perimeter, for 285. (Although in this book that's actually at one point a real military perimeter, show more so I could see where that could get confusing.) Also, The Buckhead Diner is the name of a restaurant, not a generic term, so the entire thing should be capitalized. And the 30-year old narrator could not possibly have gone to the Cypress Street Pint & Plate as a kid with his grandfather, since the place has only been around since 2008. None of this would have been noticeable to a non-resident, I'm sure. But my advice to any aspiring authors would be that if you're not writing about the city where you live and your characters are natives, have someone from that city read it. I'm happy to volunteer as an Atlanta locale editor.

Oh, and at one point one character is talking of places she's visited and says "And Nashville. I saw Graceland." You don't have to be a Tennessee native to know that's wrong. show less

Domestic terrorists have attacked Atlanta unleashing anthrax killing half a million residents. Because so many individuals have died within a short period of time, a rend in the fabric between this world and “Deadland” (a Dali-esque purgatory for the recently deceased to erode away and rejoin the cosmos) and the dead with unfinished business escape and possess the bodies of many Atlantans. Finn Darby is one who has been usurped by his alcoholic, abusive grandfather. Another is Finn’s deceased wife who died when struck by lightning on a canoe trip. She has possessed the body of a waitress that she had had an argument with on the morning before her death.

The initial signs of the possessions are evidenced when individuals begin to show more blurt out in Tourette’s Syndrome manner conversations frequently uttered by the deceased. Initially, professionals perceive these symptoms as post-traumatic stress disorder or another mental illness. The symptoms soon escalate to the deceased animating the host’s bodies relegating the host to observer status only. Each possession becomes longer and longer and Finn learns, if not stopped, will ultimately lead to the host and deceased trading places in Deadland.

Finn, the waitress, and others are in a race to discover what attracted the deceased to the mortal realm and to determine how to return them to Deadland. However, Finn confronts a dilemma. How does he return his grandfather but return his wife to the living? Is this fair to the waitress? And, what about this attraction I’m begin to feel for the waitress?

The novel is short and an easy, enjoyable read. The author being a psychology professor probably explains why he is so effective in exploring the emotions of both the hosts and deceased in this thriller. Since I'm also a psychology instructor at a nearby community college probably played a part in reading this novel. show less

Really sucked me in but felt a little rushed at the end. I really enjoy this author overall.