Lisa Jackson's Older Novel Skewers Celebrity Culture

 

 

 

EXPECTING TO DIE (2017)

By Lisa Jackson

473 pages

★★★★

 

To paraphrase John Kerry, who among us does not love Big Foot? In Grizzly Falls, Montana, that would be detectives Regan Pescoli and Selena Alvarez. The rest of the town is either scared out of their wits, believers, or boosters who hear the tourism cash register ringing when Big Foot emerges as the prime suspect in a series of crimes. Pescoli and her now-husband Santana think Big Foot is superstitious nonsense. Regan (literally) lacks the time to take Big Foot seriously. She is closing in on 40 and her ballooning belly is lampooned by town busybodies who think her advanced age for motherhood is embarrassing. No wonder Pescoli wears her raging hormones on her badged sleeve. Selena is a rationalist who doesn’t welcome upheaval because she’s next in charge when her boss goes on maternity leave, though Reagan is determined to restore order before checking into the birthing room.

 

It’s personal, as Regan’s teenaged daughter Bianca from her previous marriage was allegedly chased by Big Foot. It’s bad enough that Destiny, one of Bianca’s classmates, is missing but Bianca and a bunch of her high school classmates returned to the forbidden area where Destiny was last seen to “hang out” (read drinking, smoking pot, making out, and scaring each other).  As Bianca is navigating her way out of the woods, she hears movement and senses she’s being stalked. A rattlesnake? A grizzly bear? A cougar? All could be found in the mountains of West Montana. Imagine Bianca’s terror when she glimpses a hairy creature over seven feet tall that smells like a garbage dump. My guess is that you, like Bianca, wouldn’t stick around to get a closer look. She tears off through the forest, stumbles, gets up, runs, and keeps going until she mangles her ankle, tumbles into a small creek, and onto Destiny’s putrefying body. Despite the pain, Bianca screams and speeds back to a parking lot filled with cop cars and reports her find, despite the plea of some of her peers to keep quiet. Not happening; her mom is a cop after all, even if she is embarrassed by her mom.

 

Regan retains her doubts about Big Foot, but somebody or something has killed Destiny. Now imagine being a teen again. Not much happens in Grizzly Falls, but Bianca’s peer group is pretty much like those elsewhere, a volatile mix of recent grads who didn’t go to college, good kids, dare devils, preening beauty queens, scholars, idiots, and entitled jerks and jocks with parents who are even worse. You’d think, though, that young folks would finally avoid venturing out of town, but you’d be wrong. Some of the boys want to act like they’re not scared, and adrenaline, peer pressure, and a taste of freedom are powerful lures. It’s just a matter of time until another kid goes missing and another attack takes place. The local Big Foot Believers club is ready to lock, load, and go hunting. In other words, Grizzly Falls is facing mass hysteria. Can it get any worse?

 

Yep, all that’s needed is hucksterism, an aggressive journalist, and Pescoli’s slacker ex-husband Luke and his much younger second wife. Luke is happy to exploit his biological daughter (Bianca) in pursuit of easy money and a brush with fame. Welcome to the age of greed and “reality” TV. Barclay Spinx is the “host” of a show that “exposes” mysteries. He wants to restage Bianca’s flight for Big Foot Territory! Montana and his TV crew descend on Grizzly Falls like a plague of locusts. Soon, everybody is town including the mayor is anxious to be interviewed, be on TV, or explain why their daughter would be more telegenic than Bianca. The fact that that Regan and Santana want nothing to do with such a sleazy project serves only to encourage erstwhile usurpers to crawl out the woodwork. Meanwhile, Pescoli and Alvarez have several additional murders and missing persons investigations to solve.

 

Is Big Foot discovered? You’ll have to discover that for yourself, just as you’ll have to judge the plausibility of author Lisa Jackson’s mystery. IMHO, Jackson absolutely nails the cult of celebrity, the tawdry aspects of smalltown life, hormone-poisoned teenage boys, jealousy-inflamed girls and young women, and how “reality” can be warped. Think Mark Twain’s “The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg” for the age of television. Expecting to Die is an incisive indictment of American culture.

 

Rob Weir