Jamie Collins's Reviews > Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks

A book to win a skeptic's heart. This is not the funniest of the Parlabane books, but it's an absorbing thriller. It begins slowly, and if you were unfamiliar with the author - or if you hadn't taken the hint from the book's dedication to Randi and Dawkins - then you might think the author was going to come down on the side of woo. Brookmyre allows the "ducks" to present the most cogent and insidious of the arguments in favor of "keeping an open mind" when it comes to paranormal research.

An "unsinkable rubber duck" is James Randi's phrase to describe those who are determined to believe in woo no matter how much evidence to the contrary they are presented with.

The book is suspenseful, full of devious twists and turns, and the villains are as evil a bunch as Brookmyre has ever invented. The plot does have a big flaw, but it's a minor spoiler to even discuss it: (view spoiler)[The scientists are testing the psychic under what they're pleased to call strictly controlled laboratory conditions, but it was obvious to me how the guy was cheating. The key to troubleshooting is to methodically eliminate variables, and Parlabane and the scientists were right to be embarrassed over the flaws they missed. (hide spoiler)]