In any work of fiction, proper pacing is crucial. This is especially true of the mystery/thriller genre. Readers get bored if events unfold too slowly. On the other hand, revealing too much too fast can be frustrating, as if the writer needs to get this book done and move on to more important things. In Zack Duncan’s debut novel EARWORMS, a teenage girl goes missing. Her father, a district attorney, hires a high-profile private investigator, Oren West, who recruits his childhood friend Max for help. Max has “lucid dreams,” a type of dream in which the dreamer is aware that they are dreaming and, in some cases, can control the dream characters, narrative, or environment. This is exactly the sort of person Oren needs to operate MemCom, a device that lets the user enter another person’s mind, which is how Oren plans to find the missing girl. In exchange for his help, Max will get to use the MemCom to reunite with his deceased father, making the amends that eluded the two in life. Readers learn all this information in the first thirty or so pages. There are over 500 more.

If the idea of technology allowing some to walk around in another person’s consciousness sounds familiar, that’s because it’s a common sci-fi setup, as in the films Total Recall and Minority Report. Likewise, the mind-reading investigator–either genuine or fraudulent–has been at the heart of shows like Psych, Profiler, and the anime YuYu Hakusho. Duncan’s approach is to combine the two: a technology that enhances a person’s mental abilities. Like John McClain in Die Hard, Max doesn’t want to be involved, but he can’t resist the chance to be of service. This makes him relatable and likable, a realistic everyman in a world where other characters–the frontier-justice sheriff, the bumbling deputies, the ethics-take-a-backseat D.A., the troublemaker no one likes who is the primary suspect but whom Max proves to be innocent–are more like tropes. Yet EARWORMS is entertaining, its load of early reveals not depleting the story but telling the reader to settle in for something epic, especially the sequences where Max mind-hops, which showcase Duncan’s flair for the surreal.

Combining science fiction with a small-town kidnapping, Zack Duncan’s EARWORMS is a wholly engrossing and fast-paced read.

~Anthony Aycock for IndieReader