"The 37th Parallel" by Ben Mezrich

Most of this book tells the purportedly true story of Chuck Zukowski, a self-taught UFO investigator, as he gathers evidence, both anecdotal and physical, about UFO sightings and strange animal mutilations, which he considers to be a corollary. The human interest comes from the fact that his growing obsession with UFOs has to be tolerated by his (sceptical) wife, who ends up working two jobs so that he can work half a job and still afford the travel costs and to purchase the increasingly expensive equipment (and lab costs etc) that his researches demand. The book culminates by showing that most of the phenomena that Chuck talks about are located within 1 degree of latitude from latitude 37oN, a sort of UFO highway (or perhaps runway) that stretches more or less across the entire US.

It is written in a lively tone, following Chuck, full of lots of details about his family life, his possessions, etc, to give the whole thing massive verisimilitude. This is of huge importance; given that I was, like many other readers, hugely sceptical about the UFO side of things, it is important to establish solid grounded fact for the mundane part of the book; it makes the rest seem more real. There are some great throwaway lines:

• “for all he knew she had a cemetery full of dead people on speed dial.” (Ch 1, 2)
• “Some of the best portable equipment that overextended credit cards could buy.” (Ch 3, 15)
• “The tracker had claimed that on that night he and his girlfriend - a woman with the Hollywood ready name Trudy Truelove - ‘ were lying in the back of my pickup truck, buck naked, drinking beer and having a good ol’ time when all hell broke loose’.” (Ch 17, 123)
• “lately, even her silent stares had the feel of liquid nitrogen.” (Ch 25, 191)

The final page of the book, in which Chuck may find key evidence, is heavily redacted, with big black boxes censoring key words. It’s a brilliant way to end!

Selected quotes:

• “Supposedly, Sedona had numerous hotspots where vortices appeared, resembling electrically charged tornadoes that spiraled up and down with a [page break] spiritual energy. The Native Americans would use these specific locations to communicate with spiritual beings, and to communicate with their ancestors in the stars.” (Ch 4, 49 - 50)
• “The Apache referred to their ancestors as ‘star people’, pale, white, skinny humanoids with blue eyes who travelled in craft described as ‘birds with many colors’ that’ glowed with the sun’.” (Ch 10, 69)
• “The way the aliens had moved was always described in the exact same way: hunched forward, shuffle step, feet always touching the ground.” (Ch 14, 98)
• “Bigelow ... firmly believed that future generations would look at the current belief system as ignorant and egocentric.” (Ch 19, 147)
• “Chuck knew that the human mind was built to seek out patterns and that much smarter men than he had driven themselves crazy chasing symmetries that seemed to make sense in the dead of night, but were nothing more than shapes and shadows in the bright light of day.” (Ch 28, 233)

Lively and thought-provoking

February 2022; 247 pages

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God