Full Wolf Moon

Starred review from April 3, 2017
In bestseller Childs’s scary, atmospheric fifth novel featuring Jeremy Logan, a Yale history professor and investigator of unexplained phenomena (after 2015’s The Forgotten Room), Logan looks for a rational explanation for rumors of werewolves. He has come to Cloudwater, a secluded Adirondacks retreat for creative people, to finish writing a monograph on heresy in the Middle Ages. But his plans are disrupted by a plea for help from an old college friend, forest ranger Randall Jessup. Jessup is worried by the deaths in recent months of two young, fit, highly experienced backpackers, each of whom was torn to pieces during a full moon near the small, isolated town of Pike Hollow. The official line is that the hikers were the victims of a bear, but Jessup doesn’t buy it. Logan agrees to help out and begins his inquiries in Pike Hollow, whose few stores are evocatively described as “pushed up close against the road as if grasping at a life preserver.” Fans of The X-Files will be enthralled. Agent: Eric Simonoff, William Morris Endeavor.

May 15, 2017
As he brings back his favorite "enigmalogist," Dr. Jeremy Logan, Child (The Third Gate, 2012, etc.) adds DNA manipulation to a prehistoric legend to create a very modern werewolf.Seeking isolation to finish a paper, history professor Logan has taken temporary residence at Cloudwater, an artists' colony in the isolated Adirondack State Park. On his first day, Logan hears from Randall Jessup, a former Yale classmate who's now a senior officer in New York's Division of Forest Protection. There have been ugly deaths in the forest--bodies shredded, torn limb from limb--and Jessup asks Logan to investigate, knowing that he studies "phenomena beyond the bounds of regular science." It doesn't take long before Logan senses a "terrible wrongness," and he soon meets an independently wealthy researcher with two doctorates who's experimenting in his own secret laboratory and later encounters an isolated Deliverance-variety backwoods clan feared by locals. The researcher, symbolically named Feverbridge, has been puttering away in a lost-in-the-woods lab equipped with everything from a "UV transilluminator" to a "capillary gel DNA sequencer," driven by hubris and enabled by his beautiful scientist daughter. Littered with observations about things like "imaginal discs," air ion counters, and EM detectors, the narrative bounces from cliche to cliche--a state trooper who intends to solve the matter with assault rifles, a reclusive paroled ex-murderer suffering from mental illness, and a poet living a Walden-like existence. Child creates a perfectly creepy ambiance, and his dialogue and descriptions are yeomanlike, but it's difficult to invest much emotion in the characters. Mixing timeless legends of lycanthropy into a Jekyll-and-Hyde dynamic won't be everyone's cup of tea, but there's enough reading fun to while away an afternoon.

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September 1, 2017

When a hiker is found slain in the remote Adirondack Mountains, followed by another, the authorities are baffled. The only connection between the two crimes is that both men were murdered during the full moon. Superstitious townsfolk contend that a reclusive, inbred family of werewolves are responsible. With lycanthropy as his only lead, Head Park Ranger Randall Jessup appeals to his old schoolmate and now famous paranormal expert Jeremy Logan. Logan, the renowned "enigmologist," once again sets out to find the truth behind the impossible. Intriguing scientific exposition and the distinctly atmospheric setting of upstate New York add a little something more to this supernatural whodunit. Readers will be satisfied with the twist ending. The mystery is more cerebral than violent, and there is no romance for this masculine hero and the predominantly male cast. Though the book is part of the "Jeremy Logan" series, those who are unfamiliar with the other titles won't have trouble immersing themselves in this novel. VERDICT Recommend to those seeking a quick, suspenseful read and to fans of James Patterson, Michael Crichton, and Child and Douglas Preston's "Pendergast" series.-Tara Kehoe, formerly at the New Jersey State Library Talking Book and Braille Center, Trenton

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