KAYE TROUT'S BOOK REVIEWS 1

I specialize in reviewing Print-On-Demand (POD) published books for my website and Midwest Book Review. Please query for a review by email to hgunther234@hotmail.com.

Sunday, July 03, 2011

MIDNIGHT TANGO by Edward Fotheringill

Booklocker.com, Inc.
Genre: Fictional Metaphysical Novel
Rating: Excellent
ISBN: 9781614342496, $16.95, 180 pp.

Quoting from the back cover:

“Dick Byron is back! In this sequel to Lanterns in the Mist, the mystical, excommunicated priest is tracking the whereabout of a friend, Jacob Frobisher, who has gone missing. Byron’s odyssey is both geographic and spiritual as he navigates his way through the northeast United States, visiting the strange, iconoclastic friends with whom Jacob has confided in the past. The journey culminates in the surreal coastal desert of Baja, Mexico where the distinctions between life and death and good and evil become a psychological and ethical blur.”

Midnight Tango is Edward Fotheringill’s fifth print-on-demand (POD) published novel. I have enjoyed and reviewed each one. Of all my POD authors, Edward is my favorite. His quality of writing is consistent; I like his writing style–a warp and woof of short, tight chapters ; his vocabulary is challenging; his intelligence shines through–he’s a teacher of philosophy and intellectual history at the Maryland Institute College of Art; and the novels are finely edited. He can take a simple subject–the search for a missing friend–and make it into a metaphysical journey.

Typically, I do not write in or mark up the books I review because I give them to our local library when finished. However, when reading one of Ed’s novels, I just cannot help myself from marking and underlining portions that are meaningful and significant. There are always mysteries left unanswered–why did he include such and such, what was the significance of...?–and yet, there is a solid beginning and closure.

As I read Byron’s odyssey in search of Jacob, it reminded me somewhat of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery and what we learned through the dialogues the little prince had with the characters he encountered as he traveled from planet to planet in his quest. Midnight Tango might be thought of as a contemporary along this line.

I cannot understand why Edward Fotheringill’s novels have not been picked up my mainstream publishers by now, but then, I’m a nobody...a figment of my own imagination. Edward, however, is a consummate, quality writer with something insightful worth saying in a world filled with illusions, delusions and lots of noise. Once he is discovered, all his novels (Lanterns in the Mist, Darkness Withdrawn OR Eclipse of Nietzsche’s Shadow, Halfmoon Confidential, and Anaximander’s Annex) will be best sellers and a cult following, along the lines of Tom Robbins, will ensue. Am I a psychic? No, not that I’d admit, but I’ll make the above prophecy. Did I like Midnight Tango? Yes, very much, and I prophesy that you will too.

Kaye Trout - July 3, 2011