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5.0 out of 5 stars
Don't Wear A Tracker Maxima 5000 Without Knowing It, July 5, 2011
This review is from: Casebook: Alien Implants (Whitley Strieber's Hidden Agendas) (Mass Market Paperback)
'Casebook: Alien Implants' by Roger Leir (2000) is another spooky title in the Whitley Strieber's Hidden Agendas series about the weird and esoteric possibilities existing around us. Leir acts as a detective to hunt down the truth about the possible alien invasion of planet Earth and what the beings in question are doing to innocent men and women the world over, especially in America.
You'll find yourself doing a naked-body search before a full-length mirror before you're half way through this absorbing tome. You're probably wondering if I believe I've been implanted, but the answer is No. The only things that I believe have entered my body are the usual q-tips, toothbrushes, thermometers, sex toys, and whatnot.
Leir, as a sort of biographical character in this volume, reminds me of my own detective characters, who were introduced to the world in 1993's 'Night of the Living Dad.'
That book, my first, unexpectedly took off like a rocket, and soon Chinese immigrant Shorty Fatlegs and his gender-ambiguous sidekick, Gucci Buttons, were household names* and all the rage with those who kept up with Denis Nayland Smith, Hercule Poirot, Jason Bourne, Maigret, Dr. Jonathan Hemlock, Hetty Wainthropp, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, Miss Jane Marple, and other famous names in the mystery novel arena.
Shorty may lack the sophistication of those honored genre veterans, but he more than makes up for it in sheer over-development of the rump. That's how I see it.
My second book, 'See Thomas Howl' (1995) failed to make the best-seller lists, however, probably because a decade had passed since the film version of 'The Outsiders,' and the clever lycanthropical title failed as a pun with general audiences.
That novel did not feature Shorty Fatlegs or Gucci Buttons either (though it did feature Oolie Gerhardt, a Scandinavian sleuth still dear to my heart), a situation I remedied with 'How Do You Smell Relief?' (1996), which took Shorty and Gucci from Peoria to the Sulu Sea, from Constantinople to Stockholm, and me, all the way to the bank with another massive New York Times bestseller. I invested in precious gems, which I think mature very well as such.
My third Shorty Fatlegs mystery, 'My Tummy, Your Tummy' (2003) featured a vague and shadowy backdrop of possible alien abduction, with a few chapters specifically devoted to whether Gucci, his arm pinned by a huge boulder while hiking alone in a desert canyon while trying to find Area 51, had been implanted with an alien monitoring device.
Caught with his arm pinned, his pants down, a few days' worth of moldy yogurt in his rucksack, and no implement on hand but a Boy Scout knife, our intrepid sidekick hacks off his own arm, and in doing so, inadvertently escapes those forces which had been tracking him unaware.
When the silent black helicopters arrive, there's nothing but a bloody arm awaiting them, and they still can't free the damned thing.
'My Tummy, Your Tummy' was another million-copy seller, and has subsequently been optioned for motion picture production by J.J. Abrams.
I see a huge 'Towering Inferno'-like cast of stellar thespian talents, though that's not as easy an assignment today as it was in the 1970s. I see Jesse Bradford as Shorty, a coifed Jordana Brewster as the inimitable and redoubtable Gucci Buttons, with Ryan Gosling, Dane Cook, Stephen Dorff, Haley Atwell, Matt Damon and Julia Roberts in the secondary support roles. It makes me shiver.
Spielberg suggested Ryan Reynolds as Shorty, but there are very many things wrong with that idea, beginning with the actor's height (and lack of talent) and ending with his too-close-together eyes, which I find irritating. Try to watch him on a big screen sometime: you'll go crossed-eyed yourself in the process. He's nothing but a closeted gym-bunny in my opinion.
Acknowledging our politically correct era, the next Shorty Fatlegs novel will be 'That Pot of Gold At The End of the Rainbow Curriculum,' which addresses some of the modern curriculum's shortfalls, as I see it. I know I'm still excluded from the curriculum's wide reach, which rankles.
Gucci Buttons, though now a presence of only three limbs, carries on, spruce and as crisply-dressed as ever, while Shorty tackles the Bilderberg Group and its pernicious influence over the global cultural climate and economy (I was advised on the subject by G. William Domhoff).
Leir's book will teach you all you want and need to know about potential alien transmitters in yourself, your family, pets, and other loved ones. Obviously, you don't want to be tracked, even if lost, like a common pigmy.
You'll find Leir's high-class detective work leagues ahead of detective William Dear's, and makes Dear look even more pretentious than he already is (he "flies over a campus in a helicopter" while searching for James Dallas Egbert III--this is something to brag about?).
Keep in mind that Leir participated in Fox's 'Alien Autopsy' hoax back in 1995.
Watch for Gucci Buttons starring in his own thriller, 'A Midsummer's Night Text Comedy' in 2012, and look ahead for the triumphant return of Oolie Gerhardt in 2013's 'I Never Promised You A Foe's Pardon.' Both are coming out on Knopf under the Borzoi imprint. Top-flight.
'Hot Wax Diapers' will be available in 2015 and 'A Bris Before Dying' is projected for 2017.
*I confess I have always written Gucci as a feminine, that is, as a genitally female, character, and never had any doubts about the character's true gender assignment
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