Man in the Empty Suit

December 24, 2012
In this literary excursion into sci-fi, a time traveler has celebrated his birthday every year for almost two decades with past and future versions of himself in an abandoned Manhattan hotel in 2071. What makes his 39th birthday different is the fact that he stumbles across the corpse of his 40-year-old self. Because of a temporal blackout in their memories, none of the future versions of himself, known as Elders, knows what has happened, so they charge the time traveler with finding out how his 40-year-old version will be killed. Further complicating the mystery is the surprising presence of Lily, a lone female party guest. To understand her presence, the time traveler goes back in time to locate Lily at a previous point in her life, in a transformed, postapocalyptic version of the city, ultimately following her back to a hotel, where their entwined fates are revealed. Ferrell (Numb) has written a brain-teasing, paradox-defying, time travel mystery in the tradition of such pretzel-bending-logic classics as Fritz Leiber’s The Big Time and Robert A. Heinlein’s “By His Bootstraps.” But with a limited cast of characters, the reader eventually tires of being trapped in this hall of mirrors with a necessarily narcissistic protagonist, who, in the end, is less than the sum of his many selves. Agent: Janet Reid, Fine Print Literary Management.

December 15, 2012
A time traveler has annual reunions with his younger and older selves, with surreal--and often confusing--results. The narrator begins the novel with "Convention Rules," which can be construed as a pun. The "Rules" include cryptic advice such as "Elders know best," "Try not to ruin the fun for the Youngsters" and "Never reveal the future." In the extensive terminology created here, "Elders" refers to older versions of himself and "Youngsters."..well, mutatis mutandis. Amid the mind-boggling travels across time and space, including the Teutoburg Forest in the first century, when Teutonic tribes slaughtered a group of Roman soldiers, the traveler would invariably set his travel raft to alight in New York on the anniversary of his birthday--April Fool's Day, 2071. There, at the ballroom of the abandoned Boltzmann Hotel, he would have a family reunion of sorts with his various avatars, some of them comically recognizable through fashion statements that have become passe. The traveler identifies these selves with telling, almost allegorical, names (Turtleneck, Ugly Tie, Yellow Sweater, Spats). A tension arises when, on one of his excursions to the Boltzmann, the narrator's 39-year-old self discovers the body of his 40-year-old self (murder? suicide?), and the Elders point out that he's got to figure out this mystery or all of his "future" selves will cease to exist. Ferrell has a lot of fun playing out the ramifications of this paradox and complicates things still further by introducing a mysterious woman who shows up at the "reunion" for the first time. A narrative that strikes the head more than it strikes the heart.

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September 1, 2012

In Ferrell's (Numb) second literary novel, a time traveler gropes his way through a maze of clues and suspicions in an attempt to prevent an event from happening, without creating a paradox in the slipstream of time. The traveler celebrates his 100th birthday every year by traveling to 2071 as a 39-year-old man, to a party attended only by other versions of himself, young and old. But this time, he sees his 40-year-old self murdered. Without the cooperation of his Youngster or Elder selves he must solve the murder by his next birthday. The traveler challenges the conventions of time travel to accomplishwhat seems to be an impossible task. VERDICT For readers willing to jump on for the ride, this fascinating novel is engaging and thought-provoking, requiring concentration and commitment. It will also appeal to readers of Stephen King's 11/22/63.--Susan Carr, Edwardsville P.L., IL

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2013
Ferrell, whose first novel, Numb (2010), followed a man with amnesia, ups the offbeat ante with this unique time-travel story. For the past 19 years, the unnamed narrator has been traveling back to New York City in 2071, where he gathers in a deserted hotel with various other iterations of himself, from the past and the future, and celebrates his birthday. But this year a body turns up dead, shot in the head, and it looks like the narrator is going to die, too. The book is part murder mystery and part mind-bending time-travel story. Consider this wrinkle: if the narrator is going to die in the very near future, then how can the very-much-older versions of himself still exist? And what about all those very-much-younger versions who are suddenly at the party? And who the heck is the woman named Lily, and how did she get there? Full of imagination and head-scratching conundrums, the novel may be too unusual to attract a mass audience, but it should definitely appeal to those who enjoy offbeat sf and mystery fiction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)