“A Perfect Storm of Genres”: A Review of Thunder Road, by Colin Holmes

 

 (Brentwood, TN: CamCat Books, 2021). ISBN: 9780744304947

Every so often—and it is, as it should be, very rare—I read a book for review and think, “If only there were six stars in the rating system, instead of five…” So imagine my surprise when I realized that this is the author’s debut novel.

It is admittedly a perfect storm for me, as a reader, paranormal researcher and experiencer, and a creative. It combines the gumshoe detective genre of the 1940s with the birth of Las Vegas and UFOs. Those are some rich ingredients for a novel, and Holmes combines them like a master pastry chef into a true guilty pleasure.

The novel opens in June 1947, at the time of the fabled Roswell, New Mexico UFO incident. As that craft is (crash) landing, a livestock agent/special ranger named Jefferson Sharp witnesses a similar event in Texas. This is a multilayered inciting incident, not only kicking off the central narrative of the mystery of the UFO sightings, but delivering a triple punch in the gut to Sharp of having to put his horse down, losing his job, and finding out his wife is having an affair with his rival.

In Hero’s Journey terms, his Ordinary World has blown up and Sharp—strapped for cash, homeless, and looking for something, anything new—answers the Call to Adventure, going to work as a private investigator. Although in many ways he is typical of the genre, Sharp is less Mike Hammer or a Humphrey Bogart type and more the laid back, Jimmy Stewart persona you can’t help but root for.

I mentioned the novel is a perfect storm for me. Not only do I write gumshoe murder mysteries for the stage and Escape Rooms, I’m a paranormal investigator and experiencer. On top of that, I write a lot of historical fiction. Holmes does an impressive job of situating Sharp at a very interesting time in American history. Bugsy Siegel’s just been shot in Beverly Hills, a product of his rivalry with Meyer Lansky. Howard Hughes rules the skies with his two airlines and heavy involvement in innovative aircraft design.

Looking at the noir genre overall, Holmes gives us pretty women, night clubs (one in Texas called the Four Deuces, or 2222 Club, reminiscent of the famous 6666 Ranch), plenty of mobsters, a powerful newspaper editor named Leo (who first appears in a white tuxedo, complete with white carnation and spats), the fledgling CIA, intimations of what becomes the classic MIB lore, beautiful cars, exotic locations, and lots and lots of fires and explosions. An ambitious operator named Doyle Denniker runs the Four Deuces. Holmes makes the most of the club-as-info-hub device, ala Rick's Café Américain in Casablanca. Being that it’s Texas, and the start of the Golden Age of Westerns, there’s an amalgam of famous real-life cowboy/movie stars named Gentry.  

As to the title: Thunder Road is the old-time, local name for Highway 199/Jacksboro Highway. Although the story later moves to Nevada, Thunder Road in Fort Worth is the epicenter of the action. For those who like a local historical deep-dive, Holmes weaves in some fascinating Fort Worth facts.

The mechanism for the expansion of the story is Sharp’s history during World War Two with a major named Jerry Cartwright, whom Sharp cut down from a tree after Cartwright had to eject from his damaged plane. Their common denominator in the present is Sharp’s girl that got away, Roni.

Although Sharp is not your typical noire gumshoe, he still has to deal with all of the tropes that we love in this genre: the love interest and their complicated past, ransacked rooms, lots of bumps and bruises and a few close brushes with deaths, and plenty of double-crosses and twists and turns.

As if all of this wasn’t enough, there’s the Roswell et al. UFO mysteries operating as the meta-theme, and all lines of inquiry and action Sharp pursues are tentacles of this dangerous leviathan. Holmes pushes the envelope far—starting with the established fact/lore (for which there’s a mountain of credible data), he fictionalizes much of it to serve his story and, like Chris Carter and X-Files, keeps us wondering what’s fact, fiction, government cover-up and false-flag ops, and what is just boloney. Holmes inserts Cartwright into the famous front-page photo of Marcel and Ramey after the government retracted their initial statement about a UFO and went with a weather balloon. He also gives us some details on the develop program of the B-36 Peacemakers and the first helicopter, and the start of the secret measures the USAF and their private contractor partners have taken, which explain a good percentage of supposed UFO sightings. What grew into Area 51, Groom Lake, S4 (perhaps hinted at with the phrase “Rabbit Hole”), and so on was conveniently located near an Atomic Energy Commission–designated A-bomb test range in Nevada. Last, he takes the odd foil-like material that returns to its shape when crumpled that was retrieved from the Roswell debris field and goes next-level with it.   

This has been a rich vein for many others to mine as well, including the Project Bluebook History channel series—one of the highlights of which was the split-off from the Army of the USAF and the shockwaves sent through the adolescent Military–Industrial–Intelligence Complex by the new kids on the block, formed from the OSS, the CIA. I could easily see sequels to this book dealing with Eisenhower’s supposed visit and treat with ETs in the 50s and the circumstances around the assassination of JFK. There are direct threads to both in Thunder Road, as LBJ is ready to transition from congressman to senator and Sharp even drives through Dealy Plaza. With the Mafia and CIA already mentioned, it’s hard not to wander into Conspiracyland, especially after later mentions of Majestic Twelve, “indoctrination” into the UFO program, and the Military-Industrial Complex, which Eisenhower famously warned about. By the way, so did JFK… just not so famously, but even more strongly.

Holmes’s method for delivering information cues a high level of technique. One of his go-to devices is something termed “The Pope in the Pool”—information is delivered while the characters are engaged in another activity. In Thunder Road, it is card playing, watching baseball, and playing golf. The delivery of clues and how Sharp solves them are also carefully plotted. Holmes has clearly done his research. After 13 years as a published author and lecturer on UFOs and other paranormal topics, I can say this with all assurance. The foundational facts are solid, allowing Holmes to go where he will. Where the story wills him to go.

Maybe this is solely coincidence, but I mention it anyway. Toward the end of the book, one of the character’s says: “Only a half dozen people truly know the whole story.” When Steven Spielberg screened ET for President Reagan at the White House, Reagan—who was a UFO enthusiast—is rumored to have said to the filmmaker, “Only half a dozen people in this room know that this is a true story.”

One last clue in the “where do the fiction and fact overlap?” equation comes when Sharp meets a German deeply involved with the USAF UFO reverse engineering program. Project Paperclip, anyone?

Maybe the best news of all for this six-star read is that the ending teases a sequel. A hope that is the case, and I wish this author the best in what looks to be a very promising career.