LitPick Review
Craig Herbert is the executive field producer of The Debunkers Challenge, a top rated reality program in which a panel of experts led by host Gerald Agee exposes fraudulent psychics. The twist is the show will offer money if they can prove their abilities in front of the skeptics. So far they have yet to pay up.
Craig visits Tennessee upon the advice of a colleague’s relative to visit Betty Ann Crawford, a clairvoyant with an uncanny success rate. The more Craig interviews the woman, the more bemused and mystified he is. Either she is an excellent con artist or she really is psychic. Her abilities become far more explosive when a missing person’s case unfolds just before Betty Anne’s episode of The Debunkers Challenge is about to shoot.
Opinion:
Debunked is an engaging supernatural thriller/occult mystery about possessing intuitive abilities and using them as well as releasing long buried guilt. It is a fascinating conflict between skeptics and intuitives that has a lot of parallels with real life.
The premise behindThe Debunkers Challenge is clearly based on the challenge created by James Randi, a stage magician turned paranormal investigator and scientific skeptic. Like Craig’s show, Randi’s Educational Foundation offered one million dollars to any psychic if they could provide accurately monitored evidence that they possessed such powers. Many psychics turned down the challenge and up to 2015 when the challenge ended, Randi’s foundation never had to pay up.
Betty Ann is probably not based on one specific person but probably an amalgam of different famous psychics and mediums. Dorothy Allison and Sylvia Browne used their abilities to aid criminal investigations. Betty Ann’s appearance, youth, and down home personality suggests a gender bent version of Hollywood Medium, Tyler Henry. Her conflict with The Debunkers Challenge is reminiscent of the real life one between Randi and his most infamous target telekinetic, Uri Geller. Readers who are familiar with similar real life stories will love the inside references and those who are not will love the themes of science vs. superstition, skepticism vs. belief, and the physical world vs. the supernatural world.
This is also a very tight efficient occult mystery which plays all of the right notes within the subgenre. Craig has a tragic past with his own brush with death and unsolved crimes. His encounters with Betty Ann build on those memories and he receives horrific visions and flashbacks connected with his past. Many of Betty Ann’s proclamations have the balance between coincidence and truth that suggests that maybe she is simply gifted in cold reading or really is who she claims to be.
The final chapters taking place during the episode’s filming covers the spine tingling climax. Betty Ann makes some chilling revelations that are genuine plot twists that were properly built up but enough of a surprise once they were finally told. It is one of those twists that invites the reader to go back a few pages to see if they could spot the clues and sure enough, they were there.
Debunked is a brilliant chilling occult mystery that challenges the readers with what they believe in and what it would take to question those beliefs. I predict that the readers will have a great time.
