News from the Edge : Insanity, Illinois

Rating:
Summary: Immensely Entertaining fluff
Review: If you're like me, you bought this because of the Chronicle on the SF channel. It's way different--most importantly, here, the supernatural IS generally debunked, not real.

There's not much science in these short, prose driven novels. What the author does do well is write hilarious prose. These novels are so funny that you laugh out loud. He's got a turn of the phrase, a feel for the absurd. By the time you are done, you feel guilty for having had so much fun considering how light the plots are....! Ps. I liked Vampires of Vermont better.

Rating:
Summary: News from the Edge : Insanity, Illinois
Review: Killer toasters, remote controls with attitude, refrigerators with a
penchant
for gobbling pooches...just another mundane day for ace reporter Savannah
"Savvy" McKinnon at the Global Query, the country's sleaziest tabloid.
Only
something about all the reports of appliances gone crazy catches her eye:
all
the calls seem to have come from the same town in Illinois, a normally
peaceful borough called Meridian.
Nabbing the field assignment, Savvy heads for the town, forced to bring
along
Terry, former football player, not-functioning-on-all-mental-cylinders
Global
photographer, finding events growing stranger by the minute. Meridian sits
on
an island in the middle of the Mississippi, only accessible by ferry.
Trouble
is, halfway across, she discovers the captain sitting naked in the pilot's
compartment eating an apple and unaware he is even on a boat. After a
forced
landing, Savvy finds the town in no better frame of mind. The local doctor
is
wandering around in a foil space suit, an old woman is being menaced by
electronics and a college girl is being chased by green elephants. other
than
that things are pretty much normal.
Except for the body of the local police officer slumped over his desk with
a
bullet lodged in his brain.
Is this tied in with a food plant testing "super wheat" and the annual
apple
festival? Savvy is determined to find out.
INSANITY, ILLINOIS, the third (well, actually the second in the series
overall) book upon which SCI FI Channel's now defunct series The Chronicle
is
based, is an afternoon's worth of escapism and pure entertainment. The
prose
snap, crackle and pops and pages rush by. The budding relationship between
the lead and her older mentor begins to gather momentum and some of the
quips
are sharp as a spinster's tongue. Hopefully ACE will show more sense than
SCI
FI and bring readers more in the series.
--Howard Hopkins
...

Rating:
Summary: Weakest of the Three But Still Fun
Review: This is the second book in the News From the Edge series starring reporter Savvy (Savannah McKinnon) Skye. Savvy works for one of the supermarket tabloids to pay the rent while she tries to become a serious reporter.

Having been very successful on her first field assignment (field assignments are rare at her paper), Savvy is assigned to check out a small town in Illinois. The paper's hotline received a number of calls from the town about a large variety of strange happenings. During follow up calls no one in the town answered their phone.

Upon arrival to the town located on an island in the Mississippi, Savvy finds a town of lunatics. Everyone that she runs into seems to be suffering from delusions of one sort or another. Savvy suddenly finds her story of prank calls elevated to something far more important. Soon she finds herself tracing down diseases, murders and nefarious plots as she tries to uncover the truth behind the madness.

As with many current mysteries, the main character's personal life and developments are as interesting as the rest of the story. Savvy is trying to break into serious journalism. She has found a mentor in the field and romance is beginning to bloom between the two. Like its predecessor, THE MONSTER FROM MINNESOTA, this story is fresh and original. The stories move quickly and are well plotted. They are part urban fantasy, part mystery and part humor. I definitely recommend this series as it should appeal to a wide audience and I hope Mark Sumner writes some more News From the Edge.

Rating:
Summary: Weakest of the Three But Still Fun
Review: This is the second book in the News From the Edge series starring reporter Savvy (Savannah McKinnon) Skye. Savvy works for one of the supermarket tabloids to pay the rent while she tries to become a serious reporter.

Having been very successful on her first field assignment (field assignments are rare at her paper), Savvy is assigned to check out a small town in Illinois. The paper's hotline received a number of calls from the town about a large variety of strange happenings. During follow up calls no one in the town answered their phone.

Upon arrival to the town located on an island in the Mississippi, Savvy finds a town of lunatics. Everyone that she runs into seems to be suffering from delusions of one sort or another. Savvy suddenly finds her story of prank calls elevated to something far more important. Soon she finds herself tracing down diseases, murders and nefarious plots as she tries to uncover the truth behind the madness.

As with many current mysteries, the main character's personal life and developments are as interesting as the rest of the story. Savvy is trying to break into serious journalism. She has found a mentor in the field and romance is beginning to bloom between the two. Like its predecessor, THE MONSTER FROM MINNESOTA, this story is fresh and original. The stories move quickly and are well plotted. They are part urban fantasy, part mystery and part humor. I definitely recommend this series as it should appeal to a wide audience and I hope Mark Sumner writes some more News From the Edge.

Rating:
Summary: Started good, but ended horribly
Review: When I finished this book I wanted to heave it across the room. This author has a VERY bad habit of leaving major issues unresolved. He did it in Monster of Minnesota, and he did it in this one as well. At the end, we aren't even told what happened with the 19 year old girl who is dying! And what about the mayor? He walks in the building during the climax and we never hear from him again! His character pretty much disappears from the story shortly after he appears--and he's not a minor character! The denouement was rushed and left the reader feeling like the author simply lost interest in the story. No wonder this series in now out of print.