Jezebel's Ladder by Scott Rhine

Reading this alien manuscript changes you; it can make you a millionaire or mad man. At the lowest point in her life, Jezebel is thrown into a conspiracy to collect its pages.

A Vegas magician’s assistant with a drinking problem, Jezebel is being chased by the men who murdered her fiancé. After she reads an odd, golden page, she wakes with the ability to sense other actives within thirty feet. Benny, the handsome former actor, is the only one she thinks that she can rely on, but even he has secrets. Each page stretches the mind beyond what our civilization has discovered, sometimes too far. Each could give you the next Nobel Prize or a ticket to the psych ward. Strong-willed, smart, and sexy, Jez acquires pages faster than anyone. She uses her new paranormal talents to climb the corporate ladder. Now, companies and governments are killing people to find and keep the secrets that will guarantee supremacy for the next century. Jezebel needs to adapt fast if she's going to survive success.

This book would make for a good TV show on the SyFy Channel. Not only does it have the sci-fi stuff like mysterious alien tech and geeky science discussions, but it also has action, a sexy leading lady to provide sexual tension, soap opera drama, and no bad language. There's also plenty of meetings chock full of minutiae and board room filler to help keep costs within budget. Patients recovering in hospital rooms are such a common occurrence that they could get a discount rate for use of the set from one of the many existing hospital oriented TV shows (including soap operas).

There are so many minor characters that come and go that viewers would know that everyone was expendable and this week's walk-on might be dead, transferred to a different division, or just fade into the background in the next episode (a bit like Lost in that regard). Except for the major characters, there would be few long term contracts to pay for.

Rhine expertly uses dialogue to move the story along. Adapting this to a screenplay would take very little effort.

The sexual tension between Jez and Benny would draw in viewers each week as they wondered if they would finally "do it." With all the wardrobe changes Jez makes (and shoes!), the Sex and the City crowd might even check it out. And women will get to see how an ex-magician's assistant and exotic dancer climbs the corporate ladder of a secret organization (The Ladder Project) whose goal is to start a colony in space to greet the alien intelligence that created the near magical, brain power unlocking pages. Along the way she'll also provide expert managerial advice.

There's a Christian theme underlying all this too. None of the good guys has sex before marriage, but if they do they immediately commit to getting married. Jez and Benny go through rehab for past alcohol problems (though neither was really shown to be a lush) and are thus reformed (sinners who are cleaning up their act). Replace aliens with "God", the Golden Pages with the Bible, and the goal to better ourselves for when we meet the aliens with bettering ourselves for the Messiah's return. The cover is certainly a dead giveaway (Jacob's Ladder instead of Jezebel's).

It's all rather clever and thus it might make for good fiction for adult Christians (that's not to say it's G rated. Not by a long shot!). Too many submissions here of that nature are dull re-treads of the same old stories we've heard before (The Job was a nice exception). Jezebel's Ladder is refreshing in that regard. I've never read the Left Behind series but I suspect that Jezebel's Ladder would appeal to its fans who are looking for something less gloomy.

Links for buying Jezebel's Ladder can be found on the author's website.

Have you made the deadly exchange?

DEADLY EXCHANGE
by Geoffrey Gluckman
Published by iUniverse 2007
Available on Amazon.com

Jennifer Chance is not the person she thinks she is. Apparently an über successful motivational speaker, Chance is more than a corporate drone without a life outside her job. She is a person whose past has been erased five years ago through a combination of drugs and mysterious electronic frequencies by a sinister cabal in control of a nefarious technology, a technology that they plan to use on the public at large under the guise of a workplace enhancement technology. Their goals are simple—to hold America hostage, and the world. If you like the FOX Dollhouse series, you'll probably enjoy the ideas behind Geoffrey Gluckman's Deadly Exchange, a rather frightening entry in the mind control genre of thriller. But Deadly Exchange is more than just a thriller. It is also a warning.

Despite the drugs and the transmitter she wears constantly on her person, Chance's artificial persona begins to crack after she reads a mysterious line in an obscure book. This seems to trigger a personal crisis for Chance, one she decides to deal with by requesting a break from her work.  This request does not go over well with her handlers, but they reluctantly accommodate her, setting in motion a chain of events that makes them wish they hadn't been so understanding, for it brings her in contact with someone from her past, a man the cabal spent a great deal of effort making her forget.

Frank Revere is still blaming himself five years after the loss of his beloved Sarah in an apparent hit-and-run. One of the more troubling aspects of the event was the mysterious disappearance of her body, a fact that Frank could never resolve. The need to take care of some last unfinished business brings him to San Diego, where he meets Jeniffer Chance and the two begin a relationship, both unaware that they have a common past that had been taken from them by a malignant cabal.

People as playthings of sinister, shadowy powers manipulated into doing things that they would not otherwise contemplate doing, stolen memories, and frequencies that kill make for a fascinating and scary scenario underlying Deadly Exchange. One question that always suggests itself in those types of books is whether or not the characters ever free themselves from these sinister manipulations. They do face very clever and resourceful foes that seem to be way ahead of them at the start. Can Jennifer Chance regain her past? And will she be able to live a life of freedom, once she does? Eventually, she and Frank will have to take on the unsavory characters at the heart of the murderous conspiracy whose aim is to hold the world hostage with a mind-altering electronic frequency weapon if they hope to ever be free. Good thing they have help from men like Peter Wellington and others with the skills and knowledge to go up against the Director's cabal.

Fast moving, filled with realistic action and dialog, based on careful research and clever extrapolation, Deadly Exchange is a riveting spectacle of thrills and chills that comes with a heart and soul, filled with hope that true love is never lost and that there are greater powers at work in the universe than the plots of men who dwell in the houses of clay. More than just some thriller you put away after a reading, it is also a warning about making bargains with personal freedoms, deadly exchanges that in the end produce a bitter harvest.