Trying to get the memory out of his mind, Page drives home only to find his wife’s car missing from the garage and a cryptic note left on the kitchen table. The note reads, “Gone to see my mother.” Knowing his wife’s mother Margaret lives in San Antonio , an eight hundred mile drive, he suspects  an emergency, but he has no message on his cell phone. Hurriedly calling his mother-in-law, he doesn’t really expect her to answer assuming the emergency is a medical one involving Margaret. However Margaret answers the phone, confirms that his wife Tori is en route to visit her, but she doesn’t expect her until the following day because she is driving and wants to make a stop on the way.

Page eventually locates his wife in a small west Texas town called Rostov, famous for its mysterious lights. Tori is uncommunicative for the most part. What little Dan is able to wrestle from her is that she has some serious problems of her own to confront and since she and Dan had had little presence in each other’s lives for some time she thought a physical separation would help her think things out. She had come to Rostov because she had been there as a child and remembered the lights with fondness.

Dan is distraught that Tori would leave him without more explanation and is determined to draw her out. Before much can be accomplished on that front, more strange events involving the lights, a secret government scientific research area  located just outside Rostov, and many tourists descending on the town.

The Shimmer is composed of several different stories or elements of stories carefully interlocked to make an exquisitely crafted jigsaw puzzle. It has a technological thriller component involving the military, an emotional component of two people who need each other but for circumstances almost beyond their control are drawn apart, and a paranormal component of mysterious lights that are only visible to some people and have a dramatic effect on them.

While there is significant description of blood and gore in confrontations between adversaries and unknown assailants, it is possible to skip these parts without sacrificing  the essence of the plot. There is more attention to relationships between major players in the novel than is usually encountered in an action driven thriller, but there is enough technology and government undercover operations to satisfy most action oriented thriller fans.

There is even a nod to the history in the plot. The  original settlers of the small town of Rostov settled there because of the lights. The military installation also had its roots in World War II which subsequently becomes important in modern events. Thus fans of the past relating to the present theme common in many novels will find an aspect with which to relate.

David Morrell even takes a poke at the media. When the local news and subsequently the national media get wind of events occurring in the town with the mysterious lights all the usual hoopla that is a media frenzy occurs. In this novel the media learns the true meaning of the oft quoted phrase “Be careful what you wish for.”

In The Shimmer Morrell has presented a thriller that has a bit more to chew on than the usual beach or airplane read.  As the author notes in the afterward there is a fair amount of reality that is the basis for this novel. Readers, don't miss this thoughtful, intelligent thriller.

--Andy Plonka