Amazon.com Review
The word
vespers in the title of this book is zoologist shorthand for
vespertilionids, the family of small, insect-eating bats that includes the little brown bat. In the beginning of the novel, this ordinary bat, which normally never attacks human beings, is going crazy in packs and biting people in a suburb of New York City. An expert bat zoologist--in the form of an attractive but lonely young woman who works at the Natural History Museum--is called to the scene. One strange event involving bats follows another, and soon, a gruff but endearing New York cop is also on the case. They are called to investigate an enormous mound of guano in a subway under the city. If you know anything at all about the horror subgenre of mutant monster animals in the New York subway (think of the movies
Alligator and
Mimic), you know it won't be long before the lady zoologist and the male copper are falling in love while hot on the trail of monster bats--in this case, two of them, with 30-foot wing spans.
Author Jeff Rovin is the author of a wide variety of books on TV, movies, and cartoons. He knows the conventions of silly, scary monster tales, and spins them out adroitly in Vespers. The book reads like the screenplay for the inevitable movie: director Barry Sonnenfeld (Men in Black) has plans to film it. Is it ridiculous and shallow? Yes. Is it fun anyway? You betcha. --Fiona Webster
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Two giant bats and a whole mess of little ones attack Manhattan in a snappy, old-fashioned horror tale by an author who's a bit of a night creature himself?for Rovin, according to several published reports, is the ghostwriter for Tom Clancy's bestselling Op-Center paperback novels. Nothing deviates from formula here. The hero is a brave but sensitive cop; the heroine is a beautiful but lonely zoologist who finds romance with the cop in the course of their travails. The action builds in classic form, beginning with a surprise attack on a Little League kid and his dad by a bunch of bats north of the city, peaking with the devastating swarming on Manhattan of millions of the creatures and climaxing in a life-and-death struggle between humans and bats within the Statue of Liberty. Even the explanation for the two giant bats, about the size of bulls but immensely more powerful, is traditional?nuclear radiation?as is the purpose for the visit to the Big Apple by the behemoths and their flapping, biting minions: to nest and give birth. But for horror fans the classicism of the plot will only add to the unflagging fun, sparked by Rovin's energetic prose and strong visual imagination. Anyone who grooves on the notion of a giant bat hanging from the Brooklyn Bridge is going to love this smart, cinematic story. Film rights optioned by Barry Sonnenfeld; audio rights sold to Random House; foreign rights sold in the U.K. and Germany.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
