Mercury Falls: A book review

I've read Diesel's blog (Mattress Police) on and off for several years. If you enjoy his quirky humor, you might enjoy his first novel.

Robert Kroese, Mercury Falls (St. Culain Press, 2009), 337 pages

What do you get when a computer geek steeped in Calvinist thought spends his evenings listening to oldies on the radio and his wife screaming about the buckling linoleum in the kitchen while reading the Left Behind series? One possibility would be a novel like Mercury Falls.

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This book is a hoot. I was immediately caught up in Christine’s world (as opposed to Andrew Wythe’s Christina’s World). Christine, a reporter for a Christian news magazine, travels around the country checking out doomsday prophets who always seem to miss the mark. In the opening chapter, she’s covering the supposedly end of the world in the desert outside of Elko, Nevada (it may not be the end of the world, but you can see it from there). It turns out that the Church of the Bridegroom wasn‘t able to produce the ten necessary virgins with the lamp oil. This time, unlike the parable in scripture, there‘s enough oil to go around, just not enough virgins. When the sunrises and Jesus fails to show, the supposedly virgin bridesmaids begin to point fingers, blaming each other and allowing the prophet‘s embarrassment to be replaced with righteous indignation (even though he‘s part of the reason the church lacks virgins). Christine hates her job.

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While Christine is reporting on the failure of yet another apocalypse, a demon slips into her Los Angeles apartment and just about burns it down while fixing a toasted cheese sandwich. When she finally gets back in the office, after getting a lucky deal for new linoleum for her destroyed kitchen, she informs her boss that she’s done with reporting on two-bit prophets and their predictions. So Harry, her boss, sends her to Israel to cover the beginning of a new war, one which might be the beginning of something big, like Armageddon. There, while interviewing an Israeli general, she is nearly killed. The general wasn’t so lucky; he is killed. Also, in the chaos, she’s given a briefcase to deliver to a guy named Mercury in Berkeley, California. It turns out Mercury is an angel, a rather lazy angel who loves Rice Krispy treats and playing ping-pong. She and Mercury then meet Karl, the Anti-Christ, another real slacker, a 37 year old lover of Katie Midford’s fantasies and greasy food. The Anti-Christ lives with his mother in Lodi (a town featured in a Creedence Clearwater Revival hit).

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For the next three hundred pages, we follow Mercury and Christine and a host of other angels and demons on various planes within the universe. Although the apocalypse is an iron clad doctrine (worked out between the attorneys of Satan and God), Satan is looking for a way out. After all, as Christine points out, who’d want to play by the rules when in the end you get locked up in a fiery furnace? Satan’s plan includes using a wimp as an Anti-Christ, and instead of meeting up with God’s army at Megiddo, invading the earth through Christine’s kitchen, launching a surprise attack on Michael’s forces. Complicating matters are a host of other characters, some who are also intent on trying to gain the glory for themselves. It’s all very complicated, so I won't tell you anymore. Besides, I don't want to spoil the ending. but I assure you, they'll be a lot of laughs as you get there.

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For a work of fiction, Kroese provides a rather accurate and humorous account of the history of predictions on the end times. A few details, like an angel saving William Miller at the Battle of Plattsburgh in the War of 1812, are conjectures, but it does explain why Miller felt he was God’s chosen voice to announce (unsuccessfully) the end of the world a couple of times in the 1840s. This book is also helpful in explaining the demonic ties of many linoleum installers along with Satan’s role in the designated hitter rule in the American League. However, Satan is not to be blamed for the proliferation of family restaurants.

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This book is funny and it gives the reader a lot to ponder, especially about the nature of free-will. As a warning, don’t take the book too seriously or literally. I’d take this book about as serious as I would take a book on the apocalypse written by a tugboat captain (i.e., Hal Lindsey‘s, The Late Great Planet Earth). For me, I’m just hoping that heaven (and hell) isn’t a bureaucratic as Kroese describes. If so, eternity will be a long time…