Product Description

SCAVENGER takes us on a roller-coaster ride as Frank Balenger, the resolute but damaged hero of CREEPERS, now finds himself trapped in a nightmarish game of fear and death as he leads a high-tech scavenger hunt for a decades-old time capsule.

To save himself, and the woman he loves, Balenger must play by the rules of a god-like Game Master with an obession for unearthing the past. But sometimes the past is buried for a reason. As modern technology is layered over the dusty artifacts of earlier times, the result is a surreal palimpsest, one which contains the secret of survival for Balenger and a handful of unwilling players who race against the game's clock to solve the puzzle of the time capsule, only to discover that time is the true scavenger.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #258113 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

About the Author
David Morrell is one of America`s most popular and acclaimed storytellers, with over eighteen million copies of his books in print. His thrillers have been translated into twenty-two languages and turned into record-breaking films. A former professor of American literature at the University of Iowa, David Morrell now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Customer Reviews

A Murder and Mayhem Bookclub review
Frank Balenger is just one of those guys who can take the hits, evade the bad guys and keep coming back. After what happened in CREEPERS (2005) you'd expect this character to lie down and simply die from exhaustion, however the battered Balenger rises valiantly to a new and even more deadly challenge. Balenger, along with his new love and fellow survivor Amanda, is barely given time to draw a relieved breath before being bodily thrown into a new kind of hell. A very clever mind has decided that playing with the lives of real people is way more fun than gaming with his own computer creations and has selected the two, plus others who have looked death in the face, to prove themselves worthy of life once again. Balenger and Amanda are separated by means of an elaborately staged hoax and put at the mercy of the unseen "Game Master", mercurially able to take them both down with the flick of a switch if they show any signs of non-compliance.

Nothing like an old-fashioned scavenger hunt to bring out the resourceful qualities of even those most unlikely to possess any. Waking up in a locked house in a deserted part of Wyoming with several other bewildered players, Amanda and her new survival buddies must pool their abilities in order to reach the hidden location of the Game Master's time capsule. The reward is their life, as while the Game Master is at present only a voice coming out of their individual head sets, they're soon put to rights as to how easy it is for him to remove them permanently from the game. Chosen to be the Game Master's real-life avatar, Balenger must outwit and overcome in order to save Amanda's life. He may be able to save his own hide but that's not of primary importance when you are dealing with the unseen and messy little gods that badly need to be knocked down and stamped upon.

The speed at which SCAVENGER can be read very much gives you that "in the moment" experience, as the action unfolds in what feels like real time. It would be recommended that CREEPERS be read before tackling SCAVENGER, for the first reason of that it is a twitchingly good read, and the second is that with Morrell's minimal characterization, you are going to need a little background information to care about Balenger and Amanda's outcome. Thriller or no, there has to be some attachment, or else the reader isn't going to give two hoots as to what happens to these frantically busy characters. As with its predecessor, SCAVENGER, despite its bare bones approach, manages to deliver a lot of incisive life observations via Balenger's mouth which may get a bark of laughter or at the very least, a sage little nod out of you.

The delight of things once lost being found again is put to good use in SCAVENGER, a wickedly appealing little book if ever we've read one. Stripping a thriller read right down, adding pace as that will often do and does again here, will always require a little more faith from the reader. We get a real sense of boyhood enthusiasm and indulgence with the topic of scavenger hunts as Morrell has done his research, scattering the real life nuggets about the read to keep it all interesting. If you are into urban legends that spook as they intrigue, then David Morrell has once again delivered the goods for you.

More of a miss than a hit...
I got used to, and like, Morrells well researched but pared to the bone style of writing. You never get much introspection or characterisation, but the action starts early and keeps going to the last page. If the books weren't so well written and carefully plotted they'd be standard, brain switched off, airport fodder.

This one starts well, picking up where the excellent Creepers finished, with the two main protagonists trying to get on with their lives, when what do you know? they're both drugged and one is kidnapped. Unfortunately as the story progresses it suffers from an increasing probability gap, with there being just too many convenient plot 'power ups' placed get Balenger to his girl and the happy ending. Unusually for Morrell, the expendable characters are obviously destined for an early grave.

All in all, I was a bit disappointed. First time Morrell readers would do well to look at Creepers or the equally excellent Protector.

Scavengers
Everything David Morrell writes is brilliant - he is an English Professor and a qualified member of the elite FBI units he writes about so he knows his stuff.
I have read (and re-read) all his books and hate having to wait for his next one - this was no exception - it was worth the wait.
A brilliant hunt with the solution not in the who, but the how - it's gripping stuff with a surprise on every page - terrific read!