Four friends leave Denver for a week of camping and hunting
in the Canadian wilderness. Journalist John "Hutch"
Hutchinson and his pals picked Northern Saskatchewan for
their week of "getting away from it all" and at first
glance they couldn't have made a better choice. No phone
reception. No laptops. No ex-wives or girlfriends. The
nearest town, the small berg of Fiddler Falls (population
242), is miles away. So isolated that a helicopter has been
hired for the drop-off and pick-up a week later. Perfect.
What they don't know is that Fiddler Falls has been
attacked and taken over by a small group of over-
privileged, over-educated, overly bored young people with
the cash and know-how to obtain sophisticated weapons.
Their weapons, combined with a video game mentality and
warped moral compass, make the commandeering of Fiddler
Falls fairly simple. Stunned townspeople are summarily
rounded up and contained. The town's four satellite phones
are confiscated. This group has done their homework and
Fiddler Falls is quickly and quietly at their disposal. The
group has also gotten their hands on a prototype of a
satellite laser cannon (they call Slacker) that can
identify human targets and obliterate them -- video game
style. With barely a flicker of an eyelid, the killers
start paring down the population of Fiddler Falls in
a "most dangerous game" kind of way.
It's not long before the campers meet up with the killers,
and their bows, arrows and one lone gun smuggled in by one
of the campers are pitted against a Hummer fully loaded
with some serious weaponry. Sure, Hutch and his friends
could have tried to make it out of the area and to the
safety of the next town...however far away. But the men are
not willing to walk away and leave the townspeople to their
fate. So the battle is on. Both sides are armed, though the
campers are somewhat lacking. But both sides are smart and
this is where the real battle will be won or lost.
The Most Dangerous Game meets Deliverance in
Liparulo's DEADFALL. The weaponry is a bit "Star Wars" at
times. When one character says something about what would
happen if Slacker was fully functional, I got a brief
mental image of Darth Vadar and the Death Star. Sometimes
predictable, but never boring, DEADFALL is a pulse-pounding
thriller that delivers from the first page. I have to admit
I did put off reading it until days before my deadline when
I saw it was published by Thomas Nelson. I was afraid of
something preachy -- but no such thing. After the first few
chapters, I stopped looking for hidden messages and settled
into a good read.
What happens when people with no sense of values
have the keys to the ultimate weapon? You may not want to
know the answer.
Four businessmen are on a
hunting trip in Canada and everything is going well--until
someone starts hunting them. An experimental laser weapon
has been commandeered and is terrorizing both the hunters
and the residents of the remote town nearby. The men must
decide whether to run for their lives . . . or rescue the
innocent in the town.
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