Dead Silver

by Max Florschutz

It's been almost a year since Hawke Decroux had his run-in with adventure, and in that time he's settled back to his usual day-to-day standard. Work as a humane animal control officer isn't always riveting, but it's steady and pays the bills. Plus, it's pretty easy when your Unusual talent lets you speak with animals. For Hawke, life is right where he wants it.

At least until an old friend, an NSAU spook named Jacob Rocke, calls him with an intriguing offer. Silver Dreams, New Mexico is suffering a rash of animal attacks, all signs pointing towards a chupacabra as the culprit—a creature so rare no one has never taken one alive. Rocke is convinced that if they work together, they'll have a good chance of catching it—and claiming the fifty thousand dollar live reward—for themselves. And if that doesn't work out, it'll still be fun to catch up and take a bit of a vacation.

But when Hawke arrives in Silver Dreams, things aren't as hoped. Rocke has gone missing. The animal attacks are growing more violent in both size and scope. Townspeople are vanishing in the dead of night, walking out their doors and leaving no trace of their whereabouts. As the attacks pile up and the body count rises, Hawke is certain of only one thing: this definitely isn't the vacation he had planned.

451 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 26, 2014

About the author

Max Florschutz was born and raised in the wilds of southeast Alaska, on a little island that boasted both a large, lumber-based economy and one of the highest rainfalls to ever not be desired by humanity. In 2004 he began attending college at Brigham Young University Provo, taking a two-year break to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Upon his return, he continued to attend BYU Provo and began to delve heavily into English courses (among other things), including creative writing classes taught by authors such as Brandon Sanderson. Transferring out to BYU Hawaii to keep a promise, Max finished his degree, graduating in 2011 with more credits than most students would know what to do with and a 3.96 GPA.

After a year or so of the graduated life, the writing bug bit him again and he began to spend his free time writing once more. After a few months of making sure he still hadn’t lost his touch and some dedicated practice, he sat down and wrote his first publishable book: One Drink. Emboldened by the success of that release, he pushed forward, and has continued writing to this day.

Reviews

[Cary Morton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book directly from the author/publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Dead Silver by Max Florschutz is a real gem of a contemporary fantasy/mystery story. The book boasts a colorful mix of detective story, adventure, horror, and magic. The narrative is well written and edited, with a clear narrative voice that flows effortlessly. The characters are wonderfully characterized and really drive the story on. I found the book engaging and was drawn into the story. It was easy to connect with the main character, Hawke, with his slow, contemplative way of approaching the events in the story.

I think that anyone who enjoys mystery stories or those of the supernatural will probably find this to be a fun, compelling read.

[Shawn Bramanti · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read a Kindle edition of this one and it read like it was a pre-edited copy. I honestly try not to notice grammatical errors and spelling typos and all of that when I read a book but I do notice them when they are so frequently in evidence. There were a lot of them in this one. They were a distraction from the story. Sometimes sentences had to be read several times to try to get the idea of what was even being said. That is not the way it is supposed to go. Certainly I re-read sentences or even paragraphs or pages but that is to get more out of the story or to see if I missed something, or for a variety of other reasons, but it should not be to just figure out what the sentence was supposed to say. The story itself was a fair one, but there were things that made you distracted. One being the aforementioned editing, another being the odd faintly prim way in which Hawke Decroux, the main character, thought about himself and his personal appearance. Several times he mentions how he felt that he needed a shower or needed to get cleaned up or was in some way unsightly and how that would not work in his favor when he might be meeting with someone. Of course that is true, but you don't tend to hear men say it that often. I know men like that and they tend to be somewhat vain and shallow. So, to me, the character becomes something like that. Now, maybe if this was one in a series of books and I got to see that character in a lot more settings then maybe I would see that it was a one off or something about being out in the Southwestern desert heat. And considering that the author, Max Florschutz, went to Brigham Young University I can see why the characters did not swear. In real life I have never heard a person use the word Freg, I might have heard the word Crud though, but neither of them were used as swear words instead of the usual S#@T or F$%K. So you have two guys, both of who have had adventures involving paranormal entities and they both don't swear. In my mind somewhat unlikely especially since neither was described as being priests or monks or some other religious person who might not swear as part of their religious vows. To be fair if this was a Young Adult book then I could easily see it being written without vulgarity, and so there is the benefit of the doubt for that. But still...Many times in my reviews of books I talk about things that are distractions from the story, the above noted things are distractions to me. They distract you from the flow of the story and in some cases are so jarring in their impact that they make the entire story to me unreadable. The distractions in this one veered dangerously close to the edge of that abyss of unreadability, really because of the volume of them. I don't tend to damn a book (Oops language!) just because there is a typo in a paragraph on page whatever. However, if there are typos and grammatical errors and other things happening all the time, then it becomes a distraction from the story and my blue pencil would be busy. If there are more books of the NSAU and the fight against the Unusuals, I might pick one up, but then again I might not.

[Jenn · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was like reading a Scooby Doo book. Read because of NSAU angle but that was barely mentioned.

[Katy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story takes place about a year after the events of One Drink. Hawke Decroux has been invited to an isolated New Mexican town by the main character of the previous story, Jacob Rocke, for a kind of vacation: to catch a live chupacabra. Hawke arrives in town only to find that something isn't right: Rocke is no show.
The story unfolds as we accompany Hawke around the desert town and learn that things aren't quite right. He isn't an investigator like Rocke but his pace and how he approaches people and problems makes him relatable.