STARMAN AFTER MIDNIGHT

Suburban neighbors hunt for a mysterious interloper in Semegran’s novel.

Seff leads a quiet life with his wife in suburban Austin, Texas. Usually, the most colorful part of his day is sharing a few beers on the deck with his neighbor Big Dave, the proud sort of Texan who thinks nothing of shooting at a squirrel on his roof with a silenced Glock. When pets start to go missing around the neighborhood, Seff and Dave form a task force to get to the bottom of the mystery. The two men are soon surveilling the area with video cameras, chasing after shadowy figures in the dark, and getting pepper-sprayed by teens for their trouble. Just as they are about to give up, they capture something sinister on the cameras: a ghostly, glowing, naked figure wearing only running shoes and a pair of pantyhose pulled over his head. “[L]ooking like a naked bank robber ready for a jog—a thin and lanky, athletic, white praying mantis—he got really close to the camera and waved,” narrates Seff in horror. The only option, as they see it, is to form a posse to bring down this deranged culprit. Can the neighborhood—and Seff and Dave’s friendship—survive their ad hoc vigilantism? The novel takes the form of a series of vignettes depicting life in the neighborhood interspersed between chapters related more directly to Seff and Big Dave’s quest. Their odd-couple friendship—Seff is a progressive writer-type while Big Dave is an unapologetically MAGA plumber—forms the heart of the book. Semegran eschews injecting serious political conflict into the relationship, presenting Dave as a self-aware sitcom reactionary. “She is missing,” Big Dave chides Seff when he misgenders a dog. “You gotta get the pronouns of all the animals correct these days or the kids will cancel your ass on the interwebs and the social apps and such.” In a time of political polarization, the author offers an encouraging tale of neighborliness and camaraderie in the face of the unknown.

A big-hearted, often amusing tale of the weirdness of suburbia.