Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle
Luck of the Draw?
Statistics professor Vera Norrie’s life is going swimmingly. She’s respected at work (where she’s the youngest stat prof in school history), has a supportive group of friends, and is getting engaged to the love of her life, her girlfriend Annie.
Then May 23rd happens. On a day that’s later named the Low Probability Event, or LPE, nearly eight million people are killed in a vast worldwide series of improbable freak accidents. One of the victims is Vera’s mother.
The two are involved in a heated argument in a Chicago restaurant parking lot. Vera has just told her that she has a girlfriend and is planning to marry her. Her mother disapproves.
Fish begin to rain from the sky and a car careens toward them out of nowhere, fatally smashing into her mom. Vera, in shock, staggers into the restaurant, where her friends have gathered for an engagement celebration.
She watches in horror as a chimpanzee dressed in a Renaissance-era costume bludgeons her buddy Kevin to death with a typewriter. Vera desperately searches for Annie, but can’t find her.
The story flashes forward four years. Vera, still severely traumatized by the LPE, has become a recluse. She’s depressed and borderline suicidal, rarely speaking to anyone and only leaving her house when absolutely necessary.
It turns out that Annie survived the carnage, but Vera, who is now convinced that life is meaningless, cruelly ghosts her. She spends her days lying around her filthy house, staring at the ceiling, and trying to muster the nerve to use the loaded gun that she keeps on the table.
One day, a mysterious man shows up. He’s Agent Layne, an official with the Low Probability Event Commission (LPEC). Like the real-life Department of Homeland Security, the LPEC is a U.S. federal government agency with massive authority to do pretty much whatever it wants.
Layne believes that a mysterious casino in Las Vegas is responsible for the LPE, and he wants to use Vera’s statistical expertise to aid him in the investigation.
Luck Be a Lady!
All right, I know that was a lot, but that is the initial set up for Lucky Day, the latest novel by the enigmatic Chuck Tingle. This story is wildly over the top, but that’s the point. Tingle has always been imaginative and creative. He really kicks that up a notch here. Even the makers of the Final Destination franchise would be impressed by the outrageous ways he finds to kill characters in this book.
The story gets even wilder when Vera and Agent Layne make it to Vegas. There’s a casino there that consistently gives their customers huge winnings while still making a sizable profit. How do they do this, and do they have anything to do with all these freak accidents? The eventual explanation is incredibly bizarre, which fits right in with the rest of the story.
The LPEC seems helpful at first, but the more we learn about it, the more sinister it becomes. This is likely Tingle’s take on contemporary government fascism.
Does this sound familiar? People are afraid that something horrible will happen (again). Their elected lawmakers create an organization and bestow it with virtually unlimited power, supposedly to protect the country from an external threat. But the people running it aren’t accountable to anyone, inevitably leading to widespread corruption and abuse.
Vera is caught between two powerful evil organizations – the company that owns the casino and the government agency that has enlisted her help.
One thing Lucky Day doesn’t have is a wealth of likeable characters. Vera’s constant existential dread is a bit of a buzzkill, and her nonsensical reasons for rejecting Annie didn’t exactly endear me to her. On the other hand, she’s intelligent, tough, and genuinely cares about helping people.
I enjoyed Agent Layne’s snarky humor, but ultimately he comes across as an arrogant, entitled dude who’s not as smart as he thinks he is. Their main antagonist, the head of the casino, is a superficially charming cowgirl named Denver. She is appropriately insufferable and sociopathic.
Existentialism, of course, is a huge theme in Lucky Day. Vera is convinced that nothing matters and life is intrinsically chaotic. This is a theme that everyone can relate to. It’s important for people to have a sense of meaning and purpose, but sometimes that’s hard to find. Vera spent her life believing in order and control, only to have this blow up in her face in the most traumatic way imaginable.
If you’re familiar with Tingle’s work, you know he tends to like optimistic endings. Vera’s beliefs transition in a predictable way throughout the story. Still, Tingle finds a way to do this in way that’s believable and even cathartic.
Tingle is an excellent writer but, if I have to nitpick, he uses too many adverbs, especially when describing dialogue. I noticed this in Bury Your Gays and Camp Damascus as well. Yes, I’m aware that I’ve used a bunch of adverbs in this review. Some are fine, but using too many comes across as sloppy.
Rating
This is my third Tingle book. As much as I liked the other two, Lucky Day surpasses them. This is one of my favorite horror novels of the year. Lucky Day is a brilliantly imaginative near-masterpiece that will grab you and never let go.
Rating from 1 (avoid at all costs) to 10 (masterpiece: 9
