Prehistoric Creatures and Small-Town Life in ‘Camouflage’

Camouflage by Ivy Keating and Scott Spotson is a sci-fi mystery set in a small Connecticut town. The story hinges on the discovery of giant tribolmegasaurs, ancient dinosaurs, who’ve evolved to live happily and peacefully in an underground lake. However, environment changes cause these creatures to leave their home and look for new food sources, and unfortunately, deer and a human on the nearby hiking trails seem like good meals for the tribolmegasaurs.

Soon, local police investigating the missing person stumble upon signs of something unusual alive in the woods, and bring in researchers… while trying to keep this discovery from terrifying the local residents. There’s a gentle romance between Sean, a police officer, and Vanessa, a local shop owner and high school pal of the missing man.  The romance wasn’t the focus of the story, and there weren’t really particularly surprising twists in the course of the romance. No obligatory couple fight, just two people getting to know each other and really liking each other. Just what I like in fictional romance.

I’m not a huge fan of police procedurals, so I was happy that most of the scenes at the police station were about coworkers trying to do a good job, without antagonizing a boss with a rather different view of how to handle the tribolmegasaurs. Without giving away too much, some see the creatures as dangerous, and want to immediately destroy them,  while others are scientifically curious about the new discovery.

I AM a huge fan of science nerds doing their nerd thing, especially when the science is explained for hobbyist readers. Since they’re interacting with police and other workers, it makes sense for the researchers to explain what they’re doing and why, and making it clear for readers.  Recently, I’ve been reading about species that evolved specifically for life on isolated South Pacific islands (Yeah, I’ll read non-fiction if I must), so I thought the blind and bioluminscent cave-creatures was a reasonable evolutionary background in this scifi story. One of the scientists gets adorably excited about the chance to dissect and study a living dino. Another one gets excited when some of the cave creatures look like creatures from folklore.  

This is a fun, science-based adventure, with small-town life in the background.