Walker

by James Weaver

A thriller with a twist can be hard to find, and one that includes humour, action, suspense, romance, mystery, magic, strong visual impact and a 'spirit' bear with bad breath is rarer still. Walker provides this and more.Jim Rexman is a middle-aged, divorced under-achiever who since his discharge from the army has drifted from one job to another and knows that, because his sales are down, he is in line to be fired from his present job at any moment. While on the road to Salt Lake City for a meeting with his area manager he is lured to a campsite for an encounter with a Native American shaman, accompanied by a number of totem power animals. After sharing a meal, Rexman discovers the man who's just fed him has been dead for more than two hundred and fifty years.The long-dead shaman offers Rexman one more chance (perhaps his last) to walk the path of adventure with the help of some mystical tools; a stone made of elements from the three realities through which shamans move, and a staff. Rexman (renamed Walker) doesn't exactly jump at the chance but he does take it, and a modern myth begins to take shape.A few hours after agreeing to help, Walker discovers there are hidden clauses to his new employment contract, one of which is that he has to walk everywhere, including between the worlds and different realities.Walker's task is to stop a Tribal Council from reaching an agreement which would perpetrate an ecological and spiritual disaster. The council is about to give a mining company the right to strip mine coal on sacred tribal land which would enable the company, unknown to the Indians, to dig up a long-forgotten store of deadly nerve gas to sell to terrorists on the black market. Walker has to dodge the police, the FBI and representatives of the mining company who are determined to kill him.Walker is helped in his mission by a spirit bear, an earth spirit with a pathological liking for chocolate, and elemental spirits of primordial power. All of these colourful characters contribute to producing magical events, including surrounding a town with a wall of ice in order to buy our hero some time.

415 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 12, 2011