MONSTERS ALL THE WAY DOWN BY RYAN MCSWAIN
10/13/14 BOOK REVIEW: MONSTERS ALL THE WAY DOWN BY RYAN MCSWAIN
If you like a good mystery, wrapped in a little science fiction, laced with lots of violence, and tied together with the ultimate evil, then Monsters All The Way Down, Ryan McSwain’s debut novel, is for you.
As I read Mr. McSwain’s novel I was reminded of Steven King’s It. Though substantially different in narrative, they are thematically similar. It is a journey in a battle of good versus an incomprehensible evil, the story of three people with courage and knowledge to end demonic forces.
The story opens with protagonist, Brennan Ward, submitting to a DNA background check. He’s taken into custody by a questionable law enforcement authority, and submitted to brutal interrogation techniques. He escapes and begins to thread together information about gruesome serial killings for which he is the prime suspect. He also remembers having contact with some of the victims, and begins to wonder if, perhaps, he is a serial killer.
The only person who was ever able to identify Brennan as the killer is Joan Runciter. He tracks her down in an attempt to solve the mystery, and it is solved with the unexpected appearance of a character named Thomas. Together the three begin a road trip that adds new meaning to the word roadkill. In the course of their journey they uncover the truth of a centuries old evil.
Michael J. Tucker
Growing up in the cold northern climate of Pittsburgh, PA, and an only child, Mike was often trapped indoors and left to his own devices, where he would create space ships out of cardboard boxes, convert his mother’s ironing board into a horse and put on his Sunday suit and tie and his father’s fedora and become a newspaper reporter or police detective. This experience left him with an unlimited imagination and the ability to write electrifying short stories and novels.
Mike is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, Aquarius Falling and Capricorn’s Collapse. He has also published a collection of short stories entitled, The New Neighbor, and a poetry collection; Your Voice Spoke To My Ear. His poem, The Coyote’s Den, was included in the Civil War Anthology, Filtered Through Time.
He is a judge for the Janice Keck Literary Award, and the moderator of the Williamson County Library Writers’ Critique Group.
Reviewers of Mike’s novels have compared his writing to: Thomas Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Simmons, and J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. Albert Beckus, Professor Emeritus of Literature at Austin Peay University recently wrote of his novels: “They move naturalistically in the American literary tradition of Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, but with a twist…as found in The Great Gatsby.”
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