Review: The Hoax

The blurb on the back cover of The Hoax by Adrienne Jones doesn’t sound interesting at all, didn’t give me much of an indication of what I was in for and wasn’t really motivating when I cracked open the book. Luckily, the story starts out with a bizarre murder, a guy throwing up behind a funeral home and another guy announcing he’s going to start a religious cult. Jones’ ad for The Hoax on her MySpace page is much more engaging and got my interest:

“Messiahs are made, not born. Joey Duvaine needed a career change. World domination seemed like a fun gig.”

There’s no way to pigeonhole The Hoax into one genre. It’s mystery. It’s fantasy. It’s mythology. It’s a family drama. In some ways, it’s even a love story. I guess “speculative mystery with sudden bursts of dysfunctional familial and romantic love” would be a good way to describe it.

The Hoax slows down in the beginning when everyone is being established, but Jones inserted enough weirdness in it to keep me reading. It picked up significantly once the actual hoax kicked into gear.

Jones strikes me as an author who really loves her characters, puts a lot of effort into developing them and wants the reader to know all about them. Secondary and even tertiary characters get a lot of face time in The Hoax. They’re all such distinct and well-rounded characters that it’s OK and doesn’t bog things down.

Oddly, the one who seemed the least developed was the main character, Patrick O’Brien. We get that he loves his friends and usually feels overshadowed by them. We get that he wants a girl in his life. We get that he has a hard time wrapping his head around the situation. But, he doesn’t have much of a personality. Patrick’s “I just can’t believe it!” approach to everything was really irritating. He was like that right up until the end. Dude, believe it. Now deal with it.

Copie and Father Carbone, however, deserve their own buddy comic book where they travel the country investigating supernatural occurrences and argue about who’s going to drive.

The Hoax didn’t give me anything I expected, which, when you’re a jaded old nag like me, is refreshing. It’s definitely a worthwhile read.

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