M.J. Allan, AuthorHouse, USA, 2006, Softcover, 93 pages, Not illustrated, ISBN: 1425962041

M.J. Allan's entry to the rich world of Elvis literature is an interesting one. Allan's novel offers the Elvis is alive conspiracy theme, but with a twist. Rather than explicitly suggesting The King is still alive, the author cleverly wrote his book as "one possible explanation of how death may have been cheated". And his narrative construction, basing it largely in interview format is similarly clever. A strength of this release is its characters. While in a book of 93 pages there is minimal opportunity to richly develop your characters, Allan does a good job of making the central protagonists believable, and likeable.

Allan has an easy to read style. It relies as much on the author's ability to elicit vivid images in the reader's mind as it does on matter of fact storytelling:

As he threw aside the bedclothes and swung his legs onto the floor, he placed his elbows on his knees and started to drop his sweat-soaked face into his hands when he noticed Sunny sitting up straight as a statue. His black and grey furry face with its piercing black eyes were staring into John's face.

.......................

I was to feel those icy black fingers and that black hand of depression cover me for many years.

Whether or not we need another book about Elvis being alive is questionable. With another 4 or 5 non-fiction titles on the theme due to be published later in 2007 or 2008, this sub-genre in the Elvis library is an impressive, if albeit, suspect one.

Verdict: While M.J. Allan's "The Elvis Interview A Second Chance" offers little that is new in the Elvis is alive story, it is a neatly constructed and entertaining novel which should please many fans.

Buy "The Elvis Interview A Second Chance"

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