“Play Dead” by Ryan Brown,$24.99
So my editor says, “There’s this book by a Texas author about zombies and football. You interested?” To my own amazement — I prefer ice hockey and vampires — I say yes. What do you know — Ryan Brown’s debut novel “Play Dead” turns out to be my favorite thriller so far this year.
Brown obviously has writing in the genes. His mother is romantic-thriller queen Sandra Brown of Arlington, Texas; the younger Brown now lives in Manhattan but retains the soul of a Lone Star native.
“Play Dead” starts out with the murder of an entire Texas high-school football team, the Killington High Jackrabbits, by the team’s archrivals, the Elmwood Heights Badgers.
The Badgers mean to merely detain the Jackrabbits’ bus to keep it from arriving at a crucial game, but the bus goes over a bridge and into a branch of the Trinity River. The only survivor is quarterback Cole Logan, who’s prevented from playing because earlier in the day, Badger boosters had cut off two of his fingers.
You know you’re talking Texas high school football when maiming and murder come into play. The loss is particularly disheartening to the town because this had been the Jackrabbits’ best season ever — previously, they’d had “sixty-nine losing seasons in seventy-eight years.” They’re lucky the town hadn’t already drowned them.
Cole has noticed that his spooky elderly neighbor, Mona, can raise cats from the dead. Would that work on football players?
Sure enough, the bus comes up and the players with it. Alive. Sort of. They mostly just want to stare off into space and eat red meat.
Turns out Mona’s zombie-fication didn’t work so well. Now Cole and company have a mere two days to win the football game, or the boys’ souls will turn irredeemably evil.
Brown has a gift for comedy matched with thrills. The bus-raising scene had me shivering: “A purple mist rolled in on the wind. … It swirled in tight circles at midstream, like a whirlpool, and the water began to glow bright orange.”
Tim Burton, paging Tim Burton! We need you for the film version, stat!
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