Review: 'You will never see reality in the same way again.'
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 30, 2014
New author Dennis Anthony writes in the paranormal genre: `I think the genre is a great platform for illustrating the ways people -- living people, mostly -- love, worry, sacrifice and despair.' Having a degree in English from Kent State University and a Masters in Film Production from USC indicates he is well prepared for his new career (to date he has been gathering ideas for novels from his work as a newspaper reporter, sailor, military officer, television news producer, public relations executive and publishing company owner) and if DEBUNKER: INDEPENDENCE DAY is any indication of his talent (he has also published some short stories -PROWLER and AFTER THE NUTHATCH FELL), then watch out Hollywood! This is the kind of story that is enjoying immense popularity just now.Dennis Anthony (this, by the way, is a moniker for reasons unclear) has chosen a title that admixes his broad poles of interest - history and paranormal. A `Debunker' is a person who attempts to expose or discredit claims believed to be false, exaggerated or pretentious. The term is closely associated with skeptical investigation of controversial topics such as UFOs, claimed paranormal phenomena, cryptids, conspiracy theories, alternative medicine, religion, or exploratory or fringe areas of scientific or pseudoscientific research. For the tightest summary of the plot, turn to the author's website and there he gels the story plot well: `This is the greatest battle ever fought on American soil. History will be changed. Thousands will die. And many of the dead will wander the battlefield in three different centuries, waiting to find their way home. It's 150 years later. Enter Francis Trecy. An alienated outsider, he refutes paranormal claims of other researchers on a popular reality television show. Critics call him The Dark Lord. They call him The Unbeliever. Only a few people closest to him know his secret. Francis sees a lot more than he's telling. Before he becomes the accidental star of the program, he falls in love with a beautiful, enigmatic woman who disappears without explanation. In her wake, she leaves behind a procession of ex-lovers, along with suggestions of deceit and betrayal. Finding her becomes Francis's obsession. His team of mismatched investigators journeys to the most famous battlefield in American history. There he discovers that reality is not at all what it seems. In coming to terms with his relationships and his complicated past, he battles against physical danger and emotional pain. He discovers that longings of thousands of wayward spirits mirror his own. And he learns that in a world stranger than we can imagine, the human heart remains the strangest thing of all.'One of the reasons Anthony's reconstruction of history in terms of paranormal advantage works is that he serves up his idea with elegant prose. Example from the 1863 Gettysburg setting of his Prologue: `During the Battle of Fredericksburg last December, he knew he was going to die. He resigned himself to joining the heaps of blue bodies on Marye's Heights that slowly grew in the cold and dark like some cancerous thing pushing through the rock-hard soil. Along with his comrades - all their eyes flat with acceptance of the inevitable - he took cover behind the bodies and listened to the low plump-plump of rebel musket fire slamming into the frozen corpses piled up before him. There would be no way out. They couldn't go back. They would simply die here.'  Transfer that quality of writing into present day period of 2013 with as much contemporary flavor, and the flow of the book is magnetic. Enough preview: in reviewing this novel there is clear evidence that at last we have a novelist intoxicated with the paranormal genre who mixes that proclivity with historical data with great success. It makes for a fine read - especially for those for whom books that ring of the supernatural are usually avoided. Grady Harp, March 14