You don’t expect a thriller to touch an existential nerve, but Call Me Hunter does. There are few books that revivify dormant passions and reawaken an aspect of the soul lain silent and desiccated under a dusty blanket of long decades. Jim Shockey’s premiere novel performs resurrections by summoning the crackling and quickening bolts of fascination, surprise, and the sheer joy of entertainment.
I rarely feel impelled to follow an author’s character so faithfully that I’m led to take book recommendations. But, Dr. Keen and I have become good friends. So, I went out and bought The Story of Art by E.H. Gombrich. I know Shockey’s Dr. Keen is smiling with the satisfaction of knowing that book now resides in my collection—at least, that’s how I imagine it. Keen’s a good guy. You can tell him I sent you.
One word of advice, don’t skip the preface. After the first sentence you’ll be drawn ever deeper into Shockey’s prosaic “slurry,” fixing your imagination in the “quicksand” of his consuming story. But, his description is modest. You’re apt to be more like a skiff bobbing on the vast Atlantic, caught in a roaring, jade vortex of muscled current, spinning into a salty abyss — just go with it. You can definitely trust Shockey’s skill as a novelist with your book budget, time, and expectations.
One of Shockey’s primary protagonists, Hunter, is an idiot savant. Just like every other character, he isn’t just an object you become familiar with and observe. Hunter materializes in your consciousness and, having arrived, resides and develops with all the color and dimension of the living world.
Shockey’s entire cast passes the literary Turing Test — you’ll be completely convinced of their reality.
Call Me Hunter is a finely crafted story with a narrative that has you pulling at its mysterious iron links as compulsively as a kid with a tavern puzzle. There’s no doubt this book is a thriller and there is plenty of mayhem, but it’s sophisticated and, therefore, endlessly interesting.
Within a secret society of the genetically gifted, the Our World masterminds control and manipulate the rest of the unwashed masses through narrative, murder, and control of the world’s most precious cultural artifacts. Works of art of inestimable value. And those who possess genius and the priceless command the power to shape the world.
The man in charge of Our World is a spectral figure; described simply as a man with a white beard, flecked in black. His whim is law and he is a composite of monarchical terror that reflects and presages the utopian promise of elitism, and the horrors of an empowered intelligencia. Shockey isn’t overtly political—his primary purpose is to provide readers with the best in thriller entertainment. He’s careful to avoid shattering the delicate hypnosis of story by deftly insinuating the realities of culture and elements of the political.
The cascade of finely woven plot and character begins with the arrival of a mysterious manuscript in the mailbox of Nyala, a young journalist with a curious and propitious talent. She reads the first lines, “Zhivago is dead. I hunted him down and I killed him.” Shockey told Townhall that those were the first lines he wrote some twenty-five years ago. Worlds and lifetimes away. “I started when I was ten years old trying to write a novel, but didn’t have the skills, number one, and didn’t have a story to tell…To me, living life first is more important. I wanted to live life and tell a story that is reality.”
Hemingway would envy the breadth and depth of Shockey’s wanderlust. And, all that eclectic and multifaceted living has been compressed by the irresistible forces of life lived out in the open, resulting in this debut thriller gemstone.
Like any great work of fiction, Call Me Hunter is constructed around kernels of truth and is an honest look at how society’s superstructures are either grounded or totter perilously in the ether of fantasy. Shockey told Townhall, “The harder they look for the truth the more truths they will find and the more difficult it will be for them to disbelieve.”
One of Shockey’s primary antagonists, Zhivago, is an evil beast that scents at the air like a hound and tracks what he desires while preying on young women, bringing them to the brink of death while satiating his penchant for sexual domination. He, like the other members of Our World, is a master manipulator, dangling the gullible masses at the end of his tangled genius. Social movements are a vehicle of choice for Zhivago, manipulating the ideological, social soldiers, and devotees of think-speak.
The evil that inhabits him is the same evil that stalks the headlines today. It’s palpable and unnerving in Zhivago’s living presence on the page.
Zhivago isn’t the only social foil in Shockey’s work. Nyala plays a prominent role in communicating Shockey’s concerns about cultural devolution. She recognizes, as a doggedly truthful and dedicated journalist, that since Watergate, journalism has sold out to fame, recognition, and wealth for breaking the big story. “Damn the truth. Damn the facts. Fake news. That was what motivated virtually all their journalism peers.”
Call Me Hunter is a transformative work. As a reader, you’ll be impacted in surprising ways. Regardless of your background, talents, or perspective, Hunter’s character will challenge the way you think about human potential, and likely your own. You may not end up buying an art history book and reengaging with a neglected discipline, but I’m willing to wager you’ll revisit something forsaken like an old photo album in the attic.
For the thriller genre, Call Me Hunter is a paradigm shift. It’s a unique way of writing in the space, and that, in and of itself, is a monumental achievement. Call Me Hunter is available now, wherever you love to buy your books.