STRANGE TIMING

In Bruce’s SF/thriller series entry, weird-news correspondent Alexander Strange is set to get married in a time-twisted version of Florida where prehistoric creatures exist.

The countdown to Christmas has already begun on the island of Goodland, Florida, and all Strange wants to do in the next 10 days is file his special Yuletide dispatches to Tropic Press before the deadline. He’d also like to help his private-eye buddy, Lester Rivers, track down the people responsible for stealing the baby Jesus right out of a local megachurch’s Nativity display. There’s a war on Christmas, apparently, and the megachurch’s crooked pastor isn’t above engaging in nefarious shenanigans to prosecute it. Things turn stranger for Strange when a cutlass-wielding mannequin, which he keeps aboard his houseboat, comes to life and somehow starts communicating with him. “Mona” warns Strange that his girlfriend, Gwenn Giroux—an attorney on important business in Portugal—is in grave danger and will be hurt if he doesn’t get to her quickly. Strange doesn’t immediately grasp that he and the people he loves most dearly have become hopelessly entangled in a nasty case of quantum retrocausality—a phenomenon in which the future is affecting the past. In this case, it involves a disgruntled individual and a shady Florida genetics laboratory known as the Lightgate Institute. When Strange finally reaches Gwenn, there’s an airplane, of all things, bearing down on her. One thing’s for sure: Readers will encounter plenty of scenes of peril before the tale is told. (Also, the stolen baby Jesus will return to the narrative.) Over the course of this novel, Bruce delivers snappy dialogue and crackling prose, and he’s clearly having a great time spinning an intriguing and well-paced adventure story. He also gets high marks for deftly managing the thorny time paradoxes that retrocausality invites, as well as reanimated dinosaurs, skunk apes, and an Elvis Presley impersonator. There’s even James Bond references shaken and stirred into the mix. The story also manages to serve as an unexpectedly warm homage to the state of Florida itself.

A highly entertaining romp through high strangeness.