The Silly Season

When Zoe Kaplan sees what looks like a UFO flying over Michigan Stadium, she's sure it is a hoax. Calls start flooding in about the sighting, and before she knows it, Zoe has a very controversial story on her hands. Plenty of people begin to develop theories of their own.... History professor Thomas Edison Stempel, a dedicated ufologist, is convinced the UFO is really a fraud made to discredit his careful research and make him a laughingstock. Then there is Conrad deLeeuw, a skeptic who thinks Stempel is the one who set the whole thing up. Jarvis McCray believes he has documented proof of an alien/government conspiracy. And Maddalena Maestra, channeler for the alien Greys. And Rudy Giambra, best-selling author whose latest book outlines details of the upcoming alien war. And finally there is Beryl, who announces that the Greys are finally going to purge the earth of evildoers. Police lieutenant Karl Genesko ends up assigned to the case and is horrified when all these psychics, alien abductees, millennialists, and other assorted misfits flock into town. Genesko tells Zoe he plans to give the case "all the attention it deserves." Which isn't much - until Professor Stempel turns up dead, electrocuted in an open field next to a wide, burned area that looks an awful lot like a UFO landing site. Genesko figures he can trap the culprit; what he doesn't figure is how close it could bring him to sharing Professor Stempel's fate.


Genre: Mystery

"[Holtzer] lifts herself into the front ranks of present-day mystery writers." - Margaret Maron