The Shimmer
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4.7 • 6 Ratings
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
Since 1889, mysterious lights have appeared outside Rostov, a remote Texas town. Ranchers believed them to be the campfires of rustlers, but campfires don’t rise and fall, merge, and change colors.
In World War I, the locals believed that the lights came from German forces massing on the Mexican border. In the Second World War, the US military built an airfield there and used planes to try to discover the secret of the lights. In 1980, the entire town set out on a “Ghost Light Hunt.”
For more than a century, each attempt to get close to the lights met with horrifying results.
Now police officer Dan Page follows the trail of his missing wife from New Mexico to Texas and discovers that she and hundreds of spectators have become enraptured by the lights. After a crazed gunman fires obsessively into the crowd, the stage is set for more death.
To save his wife, Page must confront the mystery of the lights. His desperate search reveals a government conspiracy that dates back to World War II. The abandoned airfield is more than what it seems. So is a nearby observatory, with a purpose even more mysterious and lethal than the lights themselves.
Drawing his inspiration from the real-life Marfa lights, critically acclaimed Morrell packs The Shimmer with his trademark blend of action and terror.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The unexplained real-life phenomenon of the Marfa, Tex., lights in the sky provides the inspiration for this patchwork thriller from bestseller Morrell (First Blood), who plays with possible theories to account for the mysterious lights the shimmer of the title as well as the various reactions people have had to them since as far back as WWI. When Tori Page, wife of Santa Fe cop Dan Page, unexpectedly turns up in the small west Texas town of Rostov, the book's stand-in for Marfa, Dan flies to Rostov, where he winds up trying to understand the lights' powerful effects. Some can't see the lights, some feel they can produce miracles and some viewers turn homicidal. Still others hope to harness the power of the lights for military uses. A massacre, secret government installations and experiments and Page's investigative efforts fail to coalesce into the kind of riveting suspense that has been Morrell's hallmark. 10-city author tour.
