Jaden Parker is on a journey through the American West to catch up with some high school buddies. After a stop in Phoenix, where a nightmare of ancient warriors in endless battle acts as a portent of what may soon occur, Jaden chances upon Viva, an intriguing fortune teller, and becomes besotted. Jaden learns that Viva sometimes works for the police as a kind of psychic advisor on difficult cases. Soon the couple accidentally stumble upon a child trafficking racket. It’s the same gang that Jaden’s friend Seth has been trying to expose in a suppressed story for a local newspaper. When Seth is killed and his laptop stolen, Jaden and Viva are thrown into danger. As they head to the New Age center of Sedona, will they be able to bust open the pedophile ring—or will the powerful elite manage to silence them?
Emory John Michael’s DELIVERANCE: A Road Trip to Die For is a literary thriller concerning corrupt cops and politicians with added overtones of New Age spirituality, Jungian analysis, and astrology. As a crime novel, the protagonists’ perils as they attempt to evade and expose the villains of the piece are fairly standard, and it is rather less gripping than it might have been. Michael’s prose lacks the kinetic excitement that the best chase-and-escape novels rely on. In one sequence, where Viva is disguised by a veil and is giving a fortune-telling reading to a main villain who has not recognized her, Michael fumbles this wonderfully Hitchcockian set piece with a leaden, rote dialogue sequence: “You know… you remind me of a gal who’s got quite a psychic gift. She works with cops, solving murder cases,” says the villain, as Jaden observes from a hidden corner. This villain, named Darko—one of a number of rather fancifully monikered, cartoonish characters—then (rather unbelievably) offers up various key plot points before finally realizing who he’s talking to.
The layering of mysticism and New Age thinking adds a refreshing twist to this otherwise quite predictable saga. Indeed, Michael seems more at home exploring things like mysterious energy vortexes around Sedona than he does with the more generic plotting of the crime story that serves as the spine of the novel.
There is an undercurrent of yearning and seeking expressed by the lead character that works in relation to his burgeoning romance, but far less so in regards to the criminal milieu in which the author has thrown him. It is as if a promising coming-of-age novel has been bolted onto a thriller. In one passage, Jaden recalls a moment, some years previously, that changed his life: “Early one morning, under a starless sky, I woke from a restless sleep […] I stood motionless, absorbed in the desert silence, when I heard an ethereal voice, clear as a tuning fork. In the silence, you hear the voice of God. I was stunned, moved to tears, and yearned to hear more from the mysterious voice.” This idea of searching for something, coupled with a difficult relationship with his father, are the key drivers for Jaden’s journey; and when the more spiritual aspects are foregrounded, the novel works well. Unfortunately, much of Jaden’s internal psychic struggles are overshadowed by a fairly run-of-the-mill criminal conspiracy, which rarely convinces.
Emory John Michael’s DELIVERANCE: A Road Trip to Die For is an enjoyable novel that attempts to combine New Age mysticism with the crime thriller.
~Kent Lane for IndieReader