A book review by Noah Hart.

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A special thanks to my long-time friend, Noah Hart, for his review and the very kind words.

The Myth Makers

Review by Noah Hart

“Con job or conspiracy? That is the question.”

A few years ago, John Crawley asked me to review his novel, The Man on the Grassy Knoll. I was pleased to do so since he has been a friend for so many years and so supportive of my own work. Plus, I love a good conspiracy. The book was a roaring success. So when I read his newest release, I took it upon myself to write this review.  I can say without any hesitation that The Myth Makers is John’s best novel to date. It is dark, funny, loving, sad, and it will make you spitting mad. And that’s just the first chapter.

The story revolves around an old myth that most of us have heard in one form or another. Growing up in California, I heard it differently from Crawley’s Texas version. But the myth we each heard share so many common elements that one stops nitpicking the differences and focuses on the power that the myth reveals.

A guy makes a device for a car that allows it to generate incredible gas mileage numbers… double, triple or even quadruple its efficiency. That in itself is an interesting story for a planet slowly running out of hydrocarbons… but the plot takes on a deep and darkly sinister cloak when one learns there is a conspiracy to keep the world from knowing of the invention… and that the government or a consortium of companies have acted to not only suppress the news of the invention, but also place the lives of the engineers who created the mysterious energy machine in jeopardy.

Why?

Because there are those who claim the efficiency of the mythological invention is so great that it approaches perpetual energy. Numbers that science thought were impossible. And if those numbers are true, the oil and gas game, the coal game, the nuclear game, the entire energy game, as we know it, is over… lock, stock and barrel.

One reporter, who uncovers the truth, or what he believes to be the truth, stands alone against great odds in getting the story published. His own life is threatened. His own newspaper is folding around him. His former lover (also a reporter) has doubts about the story she has helped him research and write. His editor wants more and more details for proof before going to press: details impossible to deliver, for they are buried with the inventors. Someone gets to the publisher… secret warnings about letting the story loose on the public… threats of boycotts against an already weakening newspaper.  Then a former FBI agent on the lamb because of his own knowledge of the machine tells the reporter, “You’ll never get any ink on this. There are too many powerful people who don’t want this to get out.” The FBI agent goes on to say, “Your story will never see the light of day.”

And with those words you begin to wonder how deep the conspiracy goes. You find out with the very last line of the novel. That is how well Crawley has crafted this suspenseful thriller.

Through lovers and deceit, trials and tragedy, The Myth Makers twists and turns along a path that never travels straight for long and is always diving deep into the shadows that stretch between fact and fiction. The Myth Makers made me very uncomfortable. Because it could very well be true. And it if were, then who has been duping us all these years?  After all, we all have heard snippets of the myth. We all know a bit about it. Whose to say it is not real? And if it is not real, then why the con job? How did the men who made the mythological machine get it into the hands of the government?  And why did the Department of Energy want it so badly? And why has the myth endured for all these years?

The questions will hurl themselves at you at the speed of enlightenment.

The Myth Makers is John Crawley’s 11th novel, his 4th from Venture Galleries. Read it. Carefully.