Author: Glenn Marcel

Publisher: Invisible College Press (November 30, 2004)

ISBN: 1931468206

The following review was contributed by: Jennifer Murray Somerset:  Click Here To Read Jennifer's Reviews

Chasing Elvis by Glenn Marcel is another in growing subgenera that I like to
call  Elvis Lit – historical fiction that centers on the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis
Presley. This makes about the third book that I have personally read from this
new subgenera. Even though I found it to be one long string of coincidences, I
found the characters to be well though out and believable and the series of
events to dance nicely on the line of just outlandish enough to be believable.

We start out in 1992 with a somewhat botched bank robbery by an Elvis
impersonator and during the course of the investigation; the evidence starts
pointing towards the real Elvis as the culprit. A detective, who has his own
“Elvis is alive theory”, is killed near Moscow, Tennessee while following up on
leads on the robbery. He leaves behind a five-year-old daughter and his own
unanswered Elvis mystery. Fast-forward to twenty years later and that same
daughter is now a tabloid reporter assigned to cover an Elvis Festival in
Moscow. Around this same time she discovers he father’s notes and picks up on
the trail of the robbery from twenty years earlier and very well the story of
the century.

Even though all the threads to the story line are neatly tied up in
the last twenty pages, Marcel did leave us with an “is he or isn’t he”
unanswerable to ponder. I found myself rereading that short part a few times to
see if I could figure out what he was alluding to before I put it aside to find
out the conclusion of the Elvis bank robbery mystery.

I found the entire cast of characters to be very well thought out and rounded in
their thoughts and actions, which can be rather tricky to accomplish when you
have more than just a few characters to deal with. I felt that Marcel honored
each of their voices so it was easy for me to get lost in the story. I found the
mystery itself to be rather Perry Masionish in that everything is neatly wrapped
up in such a short period of time and you find yourself slapping your forehead
saying, “Now why didn’t I see that coming?” Personally I’m a fan of Perry Masion
because no matter how quickly and neatly the mystery is solved; I thoroughly
enjoy the road it takes to get there. Chasing Elvis is no exception to that
enjoyment as well.