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MWSA Review
Child Finder: Revelation, the third in award-winning novelist Mike Angley’s Child Finder Trilogy, lives up the promise of its two predecessors and then trots another mile down the road. Back are the protagonists readers have come to know and love―synesthetic psychic Pat O’Donnell and family, John Helmsley, Colonel Swank, and Woody Davis. This time, the good-guy cast includes such luminaries as the President of the United States and the Pope. The antagonists aren’t just any old kidnappers or run of the mill psychopaths. Lurking stage left is North Korea’s Dear Leader and his minions. At stake are the lives of two precocious, psychic little girls―twin daughters of the US Ambassador to South Korea.
Like Angley’s prior volumes, Revelation is filled with secrets―codes, equipment, paint, airplanes, weapons, abilities, and adventures. The characters are both tough and sensitive. Their stories explore the usual thriller theme―good and evil. Their battles are cataclysmic, their issues primeval. It’s the stuff of superhero action movies with dark undertones.
Don’t let the drama fool you.
Angley’s story explores politics and religion with the same sense of fun and what’s-under-the-lid excitement as Steven Spielberg did with Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. Who are these girls? Why do they matter so much that the President is willing to risk Pat―an important resource for the US (and all mankind)? Why do they matter so much that the Vatican gets involved? They are so cute, so sweet―so adorable. But they are just little girls―aren’t they?
Readers are seldom treated to such a clever, thoughtful and intriguing tale. The suspense takes two forms―action and philosophy. I mean it―philosophy. Not just the who, what, when and where of things, but the why. For those of us who seldom go through a day without pondering the mysteries of life, Angley’s sojourn into alternate possibilities is delightful. In particular, I love the short discussion about fiction toward the end of the piece. I have always found fiction to be the more eloquent genre―because the author is free to interpret his message―and to offer his version of the world to the reader as entertainment. Angley’s coy suggestion that the classified Level 4 secrets revealed to Pat O’Donnell are really true makes the reader chuckle but five minutes after finishing the book, persistent thoughts tease the cerebellum like feathers tickle the nose. Could it be? Let’s see what Google does say about The Speech of the Unknown….Hmmm.
Reviewed by: Joyce Faulkner (2012)
Author's Synopsis
Child Finder: Revelation is the highly-anticipated conclusion to the Child Finder Trilogy. The Library Journal called the series first novel, Child Finder, a compelling debut novel, and, a real find, and placed it on its prestigious Summer Reads List for 2009. Both the debut novel and the trilogy s second story, Child Finder: Resurrection, earned national level book awards. In Child Finder: Revelation, United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations Special Agent Patrick O Donnell faces his most challenging and life-threatening mission. North Korean terrorists stage a brazen attack on the U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, stealing his twin daughters in the assault. The eight-year-old girls are powerful psychics with amazing extrasensory gifts, and it is clear that the North Koreans abducted them because of these abilities. Only one man can rescue them. Patrick O Donnell is the government s top agent with his own psychic abilities...skills crucial to finding the Ambassador s daughters deep inside North Korea. From the outset of the operation, O Donnell senses there is much more about these girls that goes unspoken. Head nods. Winks. Secrets shared between his boss, the President of the United States, and the Vatican. These are all signs of a mystery to which he is not privy. One thing is made clear in abundance: he must rescue the girls and bring them back to America with an urgency he has never experienced before. He seeks guidance and counsel in his Catholic faith, and during his recitation of the Holy Rosary, the Virgin Mary speaks to him. Her words carry as much seriousness about the rescue as his conversations with his mentor and the President. The one thing the Mother of God seems unwilling to tell him; however, is whether or not he will come back from his mission alive. Will Agent O Donnell be successful in rescuing the Ambassador's daughters? If so, will he return with them to see his family again? Will he be able to unravel the intrigue between the Oval Office and the Vatican? Other than their obvious psychic abilities, what makes the twins so special that their rescue consumes Washington, DC and Rome? Perhaps O Donnell will receive a revelation that will explain it all...and if he does, it may be something he wishes he never knew.