oodwin Armstrong, a former cop, makes his living as a private investigator, but business isn't booming. In fact, all his business contracts are deserting to the cheaper and faster new agency in town. Just in time, a dame in distress hands him a big check to take her case, as long as he's willing to humor her. You see, Princess Dulay is a psychic who's "nearly been on Oprah once," and she's detected a "bowling ball" of alien presences entering Earth's atmosphere. She's convinced that something terrible is going to happen, but no one believes her--including Armstrong. But that's before his fleabag hotel is blown to splinters, with witnesses reporting inexplicable blue flashes from all the windows just before the blast.
As Armstrong investigates, the people he contacts are murdered or disappear, as though his every movement is tracked and monitored. The FBI is of little help, and powerful, influential people show signs of alien possession. He's forced to add a few numbers to the tally of related deaths, as he realizes that he can't trust anyone, human or animal (seagulls dive-bomb him, throwing themselves through a glass skylight to reach him). He tries to run, he tries to hide at a Renaissance Faire, but he can't seem to evade his pursuers in their fleet of leased Ford Tauruses.
Is your boss an alien? What about your best friend?
Inhuman Beings is Jerry Jay Carroll's second novel, after 1996's Top Dog (also a romp but in the fantasy rather than SF arena). Both novels deliver a therapeutic blend of cynicism, humor, and suspenseful action. In this one Carroll manages to pull off a classic white-room opening sequence, where the narrator wakes up, doesn't know where he is, has amnesia, etc. It's quite impressive to see such a threadbare beginning unfold into a gripping flashback story of desperation, perseverance and heroism.
At the same time, Carroll works the emotional angle. The divorced hero misses his family, he messes up when taking his son on an outing, but he has to put aside his sorrow, terror, and twisted-up feelings to play hardball with the aliens. The world is at stake, but he takes a moment to pay his respects to a dead friend.
Carroll doesn't really succeed in baiting readers with the sub-question of the hero's sanity, but then--except for an alarming sequence at the mayor's press conference--he's not really trying. It's enough just to provide that hard-boiled narrative voice that sends up the SF trope of the competent man: "I remembered I was armed."
Carroll's ear is sharp, and his dialogue rarely misses a beat. It's a pleasure to add his name to the roll of select SF writers who can deliver witty entertainment without over-writing.
