You know a novel is going to be bad when the main endorsement on the jacket comes from the movie producer who is trying to turn the mass of pulp into a film. It’s the literary equivalent of saying “Well, my mom thinks I’m handsome.” All the same, I just couldn’t resist picking up James Robert Smith’s The Flock.

What drew me to Smith’s debut novel was his choice of antagonist. Instead of yet another bloodthirsty fish from the deep sea or a genetic experiment gone awry, he settled on Titanis walleri, one of the great ‘terror birds’ from the recent fossil record of Florida. (Just how distant has been a matter