BLACK MAD WHEEL

In 1957, faded Detroit rockers the Danes were hired by the U.S. government to investigate a malevolent sound emanating from Africa's Namib Desert. Having had every bone in his body shattered by the sound, or something, Danes leader Philip Tonka lies in an Iowa hospital making a rapid recovery—too rapid, thinks his devoted nurse.

The elusive, vaguely musical tones, which seem to emanate from below the desert sand, make people sick to their stomachs. More significantly, they seem to have neutralized one of the U.S.'s nuclear warheads. Having had two regular platoons fail to crack the mystery, the military turns to musicians—ones who served in World War II—to record and analyze the sound. Nothing is as it seems in the coastal desert, where, in due course, the mystically inclined Philip experiences visions involving goats, Civil War ghosts, and shipwrecks. One of the band members disappears. An actual dead body is discovered. Back home, where he initially can't so much as move a finger, Philip is given a series of injections that have him back on his feet so quickly, his nurse concludes, "This mystery, this healing, is not for his sake." Malerman, who charted similarly strange territory in his exceptional debut, Bird Box (2014), in which a young woman blindfolds herself in an attempt to survive creatures who cause people who look at them to go mad, affirms his mastery of paranoid suspense. Ultimately, the book's payoff is less inspired than the oddly unsettling setup, but Malerman's striking originality can't be denied. As a bonus, drawing on his real-life experience as leader of the rock band The High Strung, he brings fresh musical insight to the story, in which a song plays a significant role.

Dark, brooding, and slightly unhinged, Malerman's unusually compelling second novel is certifiably unlike any you'll read this year.