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Abducted: How people come to believe they were kidnapped by aliens by Susan A. Clancy
Like Spook, this is a skeptical look at a weird phenomenon. Clancy is more skeptical than Roach was; she does not end the book by claiming to believe in alien abductions. She started out studying for a Ph.D in psychology at Harvard, and wound up running a study in which she met and befriended many abductees.
Chapter headings like, "How do people come to believe they were abducted by aliens?", "Why do I have memories if it didn't happen?", and "If it didn't happen, why would I want to believe it did?" not only show easily how the book is organised, they also show that she's willing to tackle the issues involved.
This is recommended to anyone who doesn't believe they have been abducted by aliens; those who do believe it will not get anything out of it.
The Dwarves of Whiskey Island by S. Andrew Swann
Sometimes small things annoy me all out of proportion to their actual weight. "Dwarves" is one ("normalcy" is another). The proper English plural of "dwarf" is "dwarfs". Yes, I know, it doesn't make sense. That's English for you! A case could be made that Swann should be allowed to get away with it, since (unlike, say, Spider Robinson in the Free Lunch) he's writing about psuedo-Tolkien-ish/D&D-type dwarfs, rather than humans suffering from a lack of growth hormone, but I don't think he should get away with it that easily.
Anyway, Kline Maxwell's career has mostly recovered from solving the murder of a dragon in a modern-day Cleveland (in
The Dragons of the Cuyahoga, reviewed here ) where a portal to a typical fantasy world has opened, bringing with it elves, dwarfs, dragons, and magicians. Maxwell has gone back to covering the political beat, and seems far away from what he calls, "fuzzy-gnome stories", when a local politician with everything to live for suddenly resigns his position, goes home, and commits suicide. No one can figure out why, and trying to solve that mystery lands Maxwell hip-deep in FBI, police, techno-zombies (no, really), visions of tarot cards, and, of course, the titular dwarfs.
Threatened by visions of the Devil, Maxwell is also haunted by the fact that his daughter, now living in California with his ex-wife, may in some fashion be endangered during her upcoming visit. And then it seems he is right . . .
Again Maxwell is caught up in a Hitchcockian pursuit, starting from a harmless question that quickly gets deeper and darker, until he is caught up in a war between powers. Still an interesting read, but I wish he had spelled "dwarfs" correctly.
Recommended.