The Alarmists by Don Hoesel
Reviewed by Dale Lewis
"His heroes are credible, his villains demented, his love story tender and sweet; and the faith element while in the forefront is not overpowering."
After receiving a phone
call, sociology professor Brent Michaels re-enters the highly structured
world
of the military; a world that he’s not
visited for years. He specializes in seeing order in the chaos of human
interaction and he's now joining a Pentagon unit assigned to investigate
and explain the connections between the oddest and most unexplainable occurrences
on earth.
Colonel Jameson Richards’ eclectic band of military scientific investigators
finds themselves in a desperate race against time. The world appears to
be accelerating towards the brink of panic and disintegration which eerily
coincides with the ending of the Mayan calendar. Could someone be manipulating
events to reap the rewards of a world-wide catastrophic event?
The Alarmists overflows with intrigue, deceit and suspense. You'll
be transported from the sands of Africa to Antarctica’s white wasteland
on Lear jets and C130s. Greed propelled Arthur Van Camp and Alan Canfield,
two ”less-than-trustworthy” co-conspirators
in an end-of-the world scheme slowly degenerate to paranoid enemies as
the 2012 date quickly approaches.
Like Hoesel's debut novel, Elisha's Bones, his newest novel is an invitation
into an action-driven mystery with bumps and bruises, twists and turns,
victories and failures.
I find it rewarding that in The Alarmists the very people who’ve
seen the unexplainable and work tirelessly to make sense of it are the
ones who trust in a deeper spiritual reality. At the core is Brent’s
discovery that despite popular opinion, science and faith don’t have
to be mutually exclusive. During countless hours of discussion with personal
attendant Captain Amy Madigan, Brent’s hardened heart begins to soften
towards the God he finds distant and unconcerned for others as well as
the young woman who evokes a refreshing range of emotions within him.
At times, the sentences were longer than needed. Though they were packed
full of intentional descriptions, it was necessary to reread them or skip
over them in the interest of finishing the novel.
Overall, Don Hoesel offers enough science to lend believability to The
Alarmists. As you read the storyline, you’ll envision his protagonist
as an Indiana Jones type hero in the midst of an X-Files crisis. His heroes
are credible, his villains demented, his love story tender and sweet; and
the faith element while in the forefront is not overpowering.