Ithaca Falls - Steve Thayer

Ithaca Falls

Steve Thayer

Conquill Press, Apr 15 2015, $15.00

www.conquillpress.com

ISBN: 9780990846116

In 1929 Cornell University President Hightower introduces his guest John Alden as a time traveler from the future to his extremely skeptical academic audience.  Hightower explains to the attendees that John was born in 1968; graduated from Harvard; became an NYPD detective and  a criminology professor at the school; and in 2010 while fighting a serial killer fell off the nearby Rickety Bridge into Ithaca Falls only to be rescued by the school president in 1929.  He also challenges them to ask questions with all except one involving the future such as the lasting popularity of the new President Hoover, the good times and future world wars.  He responds with FDR voted overwhelmingly as president in 1932 due to the soon to occur Wall St. Panic, Great Depression, and a bigger global war in the 1940s.  Only Katelyn asks him something personal about his family.

Alden believes his deadly enemy also may have survived the plunge.  He fears the killer will change the future by targeting the new Governor of New York for assassination.  Believing he went back in time to keep Roosevelt safe, Alden does not know what his “revised” future will be.

Above are the two prime eras that Steve Thayer escorts readers to in this tremendous time travel thriller in which the tone is set by the 1929 academia scoffing at Alden’s revelations including those of Hoover, FDR and the science of criminology.  With a strong lead keeping the twisting tale centered, historical mystery fans, particularly those who relish a historiographical spin, will want to read this fast-paced and insightful novel.

Harriet Klausner