Scavenger [BARGAIN PRICE] (Hardcover)

by David Morrell (Author)
Key Phrases: Game Master, Professor Graham, Karen Bailey (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
This unwieldy thriller from bestseller Morrell (First Blood) becomes so caught up in its headlong action that it never stops to explore the possibilities of its intriguing premise. Frank Balenger, the emotionally banged-up hero of the Stoker Award–winning Creepers (2005), finds he must play an elaborate...game to save himself and his lover, blonde, blue-eyed Amanda Evert, who reminds him so much of his late wife. The nefarious Adrian Murdock, a history professor at Atlanta's Oglethorpe University and a member of the Time Capsule Society, sends the pair on a hunt through time that keeps them in constant danger as they attempt to discover the secret of a series of time capsules. While Morrell delivers race-against-the-clock thrills with his usual aplomb and does a good job educating the reader about actual time capsules, the minimal characterization makes it hard to care about Balenger and Amanda. Video gamers will be most satisfied.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Ex-cop Frank Balenger, introduced in Creepers (2005), returns for an even, well, creepier adventure. While attending a lecture about time capsules, Frank mysteriously blacks out. When he awakens, he discovers that the lecture was a ruse, and his girlfriend, Amanda, is missing. Turns out a fiendish puppet master is playing a deadly game with Frank and Amanda (and an assortment of other people), and the key to winning the game--and staying alive--is, like a time capsule, buried somewhere in the past. This is just a wonderful novel, a near-perfect balance of thriller, horror, and historical mystery. Balenger, the deeply troubled hero (his wife was murdered, and this is the second time Amanda has been kidnapped), is one of those characters you want to spend more time with, just to figure out what makes him tick, and (without divulging any of the novel's secrets) the villain is full of interesting surprises. Morrell has a reputation for smart, tightly written, genre-bending fiction, but here he exceeds himself, producing a superbly entertaining novel that will attract readers from multiple genres. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 349 pages
• Publisher: Vanguard Press (March 12, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593154410
• ASIN: B000WHG226
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #453,228 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A 3.5 Star Follow-up To "Creepers", August 16, 2008

By	TMStyles (California) - See all my reviews

David Morrell is a solid writer of suspenseful thrillers. I thoroughly enjoyed "Creepers" which introduced Frank Balenger and Amanda Evert as major characters. They are back in "Scavenger", now living together and jointly trying to heal the psychic and physical wounds suffered in their adventure in the Paragon Hotel in "Creepers".

They become separated by a master manipulator, the Game Master, who wants them as players in both a "game" and a scavenger hunt for a lost time capsule, the Sepulcher of Worldly Desires. Amanda finds herself with four strangers who are collectively forced to follow clues in a search for the lost time capsule using high tech equipment as part of a scavenger hunt with a forty hour time limit and death or freedom as the reward.

Meanwhile Frank awakens at the Paragon Hotel and with the assistance of detective Ortega, begins the painful tasks of discovering what has happened and to track down Amanda. He also must follow clues that will ultimately (hopefully) lead him to Amanda and her crew in the search for the time capsule.

The Game Master is a devious manipulative evil genius who is not as fully realized a charcter as he could have been. He does pull myriad puppet strings that control the lives of Frank and Amanda and her companions as they move closer and closer to their goal. The twin searches, Frank's and Amanda's, are well played against the ticking clock. Death, gruesome discoveries, and duplicity are all additional elements of their quest. As might be assumed, nothing is necessarily what it seems to be and everything is potentially a death trap--this gives much of the needed suspense to "Scavenger" and gives both Frank and Amanda the opportunity to display their analytic talents.

I enjoyed this book enough to recommend it to others, particularly to readers of "creepers". I felt the pacing was uneven at times, sometimes due to the flashing back and forth between the two separate searches. However, the last 100 pages are a hell-bent-for-leather e-ticket ride to a somewhat predictable ending. I also felt the characterizations were relative shallow; thankfully, Frank and Amanda were well fleshed out in "Creepers" because I didn't feel a lot of new depth in this follow-up novel.

As usual, Morrell has researched his topics. There is considerable narrative on the history and nature of time capsules as well as considerable narrative on the history and development of video games. I recommend this 3.5 star effort to any interested reader.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Does everything a thriller should, March 15, 2007

By	Henry W. Wagner (Rockaway, NJ USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Scavenger (Hardcover)

At the heart of Morrell's previous thriller, the well-crafted and highly suspenseful Creepers, stood the ancient and oh so dangerous edifice known as the Paragon Hotel, which could be characterized as a metaphoric time capsule. In contrast, Scavenger, his follow up to that Bram Stoker Award winning novel, involves a frantic search for a real one.

Clearly taken with his esoteric subject matter, Morrell thoroughly researched his topic, as evidenced from this excerpt from an interview with Crimespree Magazine: "Time capsules are fascinating. The concept is as old as history, but the first object to be called a time capsule was invented for the 1939 World's Fair in Flushing Meadows, New York. The Westinghouse Corporation filled a torpedo-shaped object with various cultural artifacts of the decade, including a copy of Gone with the Wind, and buried it with instructions that it shouldn't be opened for five thousand years. The capstone is still there in Flushing Meadows. Westinghouse got the idea from the eerily titled Crypt of Civilization, which is a drained indoor swimming pool filled with thousands of artifacts at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta. It isn't scheduled to be opened for six thousand years."

In Scavenger, a group of people (including two members of the cast of Creepers) is forced into a desperate, high tech scavenger hunt by a man who calls himself the Game Master to uncover the time capsule known as the "Sepulcher of Worldly Desires," which is rumored to be buried in Wyoming. Trapped in a race against time where their very lives are at stake, the participants have to reach deep into themselves to find the resources to survive. Unfortunately for them, as they near their goal, they learn the terrible truth that "sometimes, the past is buried for a reason."

Scavenger does everything a thriller should, which makes it hard to review, for fear of diminishing any of the shock or surprises Morrell has in store for readers. Suffice it to say that Morrell knows what scares you, and won't hesitate to do just that. Besides being an entertainer and a master manipulator, ex-college professor Morrell is also teacher, effortlessly weaving myriad bits of information about old New York, time capsules, video games and various other phenomena into his narrative even as he tries to steal your breath away.

13 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Frank Balenger returns, March 22, 2007

By	Alan Draven "Author of Bitternest, www.alandr... (Montreal, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Scavenger (Hardcover)

3.5 stars. A sequel of sorts to Creepers (2005). Frank Balenger and Amanda are invited to attend a lecture on Time Capsules. At one point during the lecture, people start leaving one after the other. The next thing they know, Amanda wakes up in a room and has no idea where she is, and Balenger awakes on the beach where the events of Creepers ended. They will each be forced by the Game Master, a twisted man with an obsession for video games and time capsules, to play a game for forty hours. Balenger will have to find clues to Amanda's whereabouts in what turns out to be an obstacle course throughout the city, and Amanda, along with four other people, has to take part in a scavenger hunt in wide open spaces to find the "Sepulcher of Worldly Desires", a mysterious time capsule.

I have mixed feelings about this one; Creepers, Morrell's previous novel, rapidly became one of my favorite books of all-time. Where Creepers was fast and furious, unfolding almost in real time, Scavenger tends to lose its momentum on more than one occasion. I strongly recommend reading Creepers first because you'll see how Balenger and Amanda's relationship began and how come they're both such wrecks (trust me; you'd be too if you'd gone through what they went through in Creepers!). That aside, I didn't find the premise as intriguing or as appealing as the one of the Paragon Hotel in Creepers; time capsules can be an interesting idea but it just didn't do anything for me. I couldn't wait to read the book though, because David Morrell is one of my favorite writers. I figured I'd enjoy it, especially since Frank Balenger, a character I'd grown to love in the first book, was back.

That's where my biggest gripe is; we don't see enough of him in the first 100 pages or so. The novel keeps switching between Amanda's scavenger hunt and his quest to find her. I couldn't turn the pages fast enough when it was Balenger's quest, but on the other end, Amanda and her teammates (whom I never really cared for) weren't that interesting and their hunt wasn't as compelling as it could've been. Once a few of the characters die and Balenger has made enough progress to come up with a plan of action, then things really pick up. It's hard to say any more without divulging crucial plot points, but let me just say that the third act of the book makes up for its weaker middle act and lack of interesting characters. The suspense builds up to a satisfying finale in true Morrell style.

If you're a fan of Creepers or David Morrell's books, then you owe it to yourself to pick this one up. It's not as engaging or suspenseful as Creepers, but it's well worth the read. If time capsules or Historical fiction is your thing, you might wind up enjoying it a whole lot more. Can't wait to see what his next book will be about; I wouldn't mind a third adventure with Balenger; if he's up to it, the poor guy!