The Shimmer

By: David Morrell

Narrated by: Phil Gigante

When a high-speed chase goes terribly wrong, Santa Fe police officer Dan Page watches in horror as a car and gas tanker explode into flames. Torn with guilt that he may be responsible, Page returns home to discover that his wife, Tori, has disappeared.

Frantic, Page follows her trail to Rostov, a remote town in Texas famous for a massive astronomical observatory, a long-abandoned military base, and unexplained nighttime phenomena that drew onlookers from every corner of the globe. Many of these gawkers - Tori among them - are compelled to visit this tiny community to witness the mysterious Rostov Lights.

Without warning, a gunman begins firing on the lights, screaming "Go back to hell where you came from," then turns his rifle on the bystanders. A bloodbath ensues, and events quickly spiral out of control, setting the stage for even greater violence and death.

Page must solve the mystery of the Rostov Lights to save his wife. In the process, he learns that the decaying military base may not be abandoned at all, and that the government may have known about the lights for decades. Could these phenomena be more dangerous than anyone could have possibly imagined?

©2009 David Morrell Enterprises, Inc. (P)2009 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved

Good listen

I have read or listened to each and every book written by David Morrell. This was not a typical David Morrel story. It was more like a Dean Koontz.

I enjoyed it after I got over the fact it was not Dean Kontz but rather David Morrel. So yes I would recommend it.

Thriller set within a real-life mystery

With "The Shimmer," David Morrell, as always, has given us a good thriller. He sets the story in fictional Rostov, Texas -- which, he tells us in the book's Afterword, corresponds to the real-life west Texas border town of Marfa. I had never heard of the Marfa lights before I listened to "The Shimmer;" but, it seems, these mysterious nighttime lights have been baffling people for well over a century. Adding to their mystery, some people can see the lights, and some people can't! According to Morrell, nobody, so far, has adequately explained the lights -- providing a perfect setting for a spooky thriller, right? Intriguingly, similar lights appear at three other widely-dispersed places in the world: Norway, Thailand, and Australia. Utilizing his born-in-the-blood writing genius, Morrell also incorporates other real-life elements into "The Shimmer" -- the near-by abandoned WWII air base, radio observatory, and set for the 1956 James Dean movie "Giant" (called "Birthright" in the story) -- weaving them cleverly into the plot. I deducted a star from my rating of the story, because I found the character of Tori -- the protagonist's wife -- unlikeable, and, therefore, Dan's devotion to her inexplicable. Otherwise, I liked "The Shimmer," and recommend it to all thriller-lovers intrigued by mysteries. The Narrator, Phil Gigante, is an excellent actor, with more than enough expertise to enliven anything that he dramatizes.

A classic.

This is an adventure. I enjoyed how the author explains all the characters back stories mixed with some, “could this really happen” moments.

Good book

A good book from the author of First Blood. not a must read but a good book none-the-less.

Morrell Fan

Story was OK, narration good but not up to par for Morrell. I've been a fan since the "Brotherhood" books, "Rambo" and on so not only do I love his reads, I'm always rooting for and expecting the best. For me, this one wasn't quite up to Morrell standards.

Bad effort my a good author.

I like Morrell. The Protector was excellent, and so was Creepers. But I just could never get into this one. Mystery lights in the wilderness mess with people's minds. There isn't a whole lot to this story in the way of plot. It probably should have been a short story. It's slow and fairly boring. It's also a little unbelievable, the way so many people fall under the control of these "lights". Skip this one, and try some of Merrill's other books.

Dont Bother

This is 10 and a half hours of your life that you will never get back. Stupid plot, juvenile writing and all together a vast waste of time. Nothing interesting, intriguing or redeeming about this book. I rarely write a review but this was such a wasteland of fiction that it created an incentive to write to help you out if you are even considering this book --don't bother, anyhting else would be better.