Review by Ed Quillen
Mountain Life – June 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
The Silverville Swindle
by Kym O’Connell-Todd and Mark Todd
Published in 2006 by Ghost Road Press
ISBN 0-9771272-6-5
WHEN A MOUNTAIN TOWN tries to attract more tourists, generally it must make a decision. Should it build an attraction? Reconstruct itself in a Tyrolean or Victorian theme? Promote local recreation? Stage a festival that celebrates wood ticks or a cadaver in a freezer?
Perhaps fortunately for the residents of fictional Silverville in the Colorado Rockies, that decision was easy. Howard Beacon is an assistant at Denton Fine’s funeral home. Howard is also a long way from being the sharpest knife in the drawer. While peddling his bicycle through the woods to his cabin one night, he sees lights in the sky, and they descend and then rise. But if they had a message for him, he sure can’t remember it.
That’s “the Sighting,” and Silverville entrepreneurs capitalize on it in a small way, with a low-key museum, a Galactic Inn motel, and a diner named “Hangar 18” with “Out of this world hamburgers.” There’s also an amusement park with space-theme rides. But that’s not enough to suit Buford Price, a gunshop owner and perpetual promoter — a nearby hillside still bears the scars of his efforts to promote a ski area.
Buford figures they will attract hordes of well-heeled visitors if they can stage conferences where experts speak about UFOs and the possibility that Silverville is a cosmic vortex that aliens have chosen for an opportunity to communicate with humanity.
But Buford’s not an expert on much except hustling money for his schemes — while skimming some for his trouble — and so he arranges a four-month consulting contract for Earl Bob Jackson. Earl Bob spent years as a government investigator of curious anomalies, from cattle mutilations in the West to bizarre creatures in the Puerto Rican rain forest. He can bring the down-home UFO museum up to professional standards, and he can arrange for speakers to talk about close encounters of every kind.
On his way over the pass to Silverville, Earl Bob runs into a blizzard:
“Why did his work always take him to the middle of nowhere? Earl Bob unclenched one fist from the steering wheel, flexing his fingers. The radio vacillated between ‘Your Cheating Heart’ and an irritating hum, punctuated with occasional blasts of mariachi music, depending on the turn of the road. But this late at night, he was willing to listen to whatever he could find. He dared not take his attention from the snow-packed pavement to fumble for his collection of gospel CDs. Fat fingers of snow reached across the highway in front of him, the wheels thumping each drift with a soft shudder that resonated in his bladder.”
Earl Bob had to take a leak. And as the need grew more urgent, the storm grew stronger. He dared not pull off the road, because he couldn’t tell where the edge of the road was. And no car had passed for more than an hour. Surely it would be safe to just stop and step out.
But that was his last mortal act. A con-man on the run named Billy Noble happened to drive by just then, and by the time he saw Earl Bob, it was too late to stop. Billy was no killer, but he wasn’t in a position to report anything to the authorities. He pushed the body off the side, and borrowed Earl Bob’s car and identity.
Like any successful flim-flam artist, Billy is a quick study. Nobody in Silverville knows him from Earl Bob, and the money looks good. So he takes on Earl Bob’s consulting job, and Silverville gets a summer of hard-core UFO promotion, culminating in a grand Labor Day festival where Howard is scheduled to reveal his message from the aliens.
Of course all of the characters and incidents are fictional. But they’re also familiar to anyone who’s spent a few seasons in one of our mountain towns. For instance, there’s Grady, the rifle-toting rancher who’s annoyed as hell by his new neighbors who are building a sweat lodge over his irrigation ditch.
The neighbors are also building a pyramid for their “Gateway of the Gods Ranch.” They’re a wealthy New Age woman named Chantale Getty-Schwartz and her personal medicine man and spiritual guide, Hans High Horse, who claims to be an albino Indian from the Juanabee tribe.
This novel is a lot of fun, with a few side-splitting passages and plenty of good-humor from the peculiar sociology of our little mountain towns. The Silverville Swindle doesn’t quite reach the classic in this genre — Steve Frazee’s More Damn Tourists — but it will produce plenty of knowing guffaws.
Even if Silverville appears on no Colorado map, we’ve all been there.
