Author: Steve Alten

Hardcover: 496 pages

Publisher: Tsunami Books (May 1, 2005)

ISBN: 0976165902

The following review was contributed by:  Jennifer Murray. Click  HERE   to view more of Jennifer's Reviews.

I can’t remember when I became so interested in the lore of the Loch Ness Monster, so naturally I jumped at the chance to read a thriller that “explains” Nessie’s origin and what she is.

The story starts out with us meeting Zachary Wallace, a marine biologist who was born in one of the towns around the famous loch, on a quest for the giant squid that results in a near drowning.

 As a result of that brush with death, suppressed memories from a childhood near drowning in Loch Ness start resurfacing. With his career and mental state being in the same disastrous wreck due to the night terrors the accident has brought on, Zach is called back to Scotland by his father, Angus Wallace who he has not seen since he was a child, to help testify in his murder trial. Out of anger, spite or just pure Scottish pride, Zach helps his father and end up dealing with his personal demons as well.

I so enjoy the fact that Steve Alten wrote Zach as being the everyman who things just don’t work out as anticipated most of the time.

As a reader you can identify the run of bad luck that he has because it pushes the envelope just enough that it could actually be true. The character of his boss, Dr. David Caldwell, is just smarmy enough that you find yourself irritated with his any way to the top behavior and a bit gleeful when things start turning bad for him.

 On the other hand, I didn’t feel that a few other characters, like Zach’s father Angus Wallace and his close friend True Macdonald and True’s sister Brandy, were as rounded out as they could have been.

Granted, they were written with the thick brogue you would expect to hear from someone who has spent all their life in Scotland, but I just had a hard time having any sort of emotion one way or another to those three characters.

The detail in the look of the locations and the sound theory to what the monster is had me feeling as if I was there a part of everything. I still have a vivid image of this scene in my head with an Anguilla eel that starts putting the pieces of the puzzle together that I caught myself reading over a few times just to enjoy all the visuals that Alten gives.

There’s also some diary excerpts that at first didn’t make sense to me, but as I got further along I began to see how it all fit together and helped answer questions that you had been wondering about up until then.

I also liked the eyewitness accounts that preceded each chapter, which added that touch of realism to this take on the Loch Ness monster folklore. I appreciate that this is one of those thrillers that is just as exciting in the end as it is in the beginning and it doesn’t leave you frustrated with unanswered questions, just a well thought out story.