I'm normally wary of authors who want to send me their books for review. It just normally seems that the books would be uninteresting and wouldn't appeal to a college audience.

Something about the e-mail I received from Gary Greenberg, author of Dead Man's Tale (Cosmic Café Press), struck me differently. "I majored in journalism, rugby and beer at PSU and graduated in 1976," he informed me.

I read on and the book actually sounded intriguing. So I went ahead and had him send me a copy.

It turned out to be the right decision.

Dead Man's Tale is a wonderfully fun story with a plot full of so many twists that it's probably impossible to provide any sort of concise synopsis.

Our lovable protagonist is Dan Tally, a former college football star at Temple who once ran back two punts for touchdowns against Penn State, tying a NCAA record. (Don't worry, PSU won 56-17.) He is currently a reporter working in Miami.

After an odd phone call Tally is made into a target of a hit man and he has no idea why.

Greenberg then takes the reader on the run with Tally as he tries to stay alive and find out just why people are trying to kill him.

Along the way we are introduced to more interesting characters than I can name here.

There's Valia Thomas, the young woman who communicates with the dead and works as a drawbridge operator.

There's Prescott Sterling, the mad scientist who has created a machine that can read minds and just might have found the door to the afterlife.

There's Moses Jennings, the aspiring religious leader with enough skeletons for a dozen closets.

And there are many more.

With all of these characters running through the pages, it's not hard to understand why Dead Man's Tale is such a fun book to read.

Greenberg does an excellent job of creating characters that readers are interested in and this of course keeps the pages turning. By the end of the novel this reader found himself wanting to follow the characters (at least the ones that survive) further to see where life takes them.

In a time when far too many books are filled with boring, two-dimensional characters this is a quite refreshing change of pace.

The only thing that really needs to be said is that this is a fun read.

It does contain important topics, such as its lengthy discussion on the afterlife, but the topics are never too weighty to drag the book down.

Dead Man's Tale is currently available only through Greenberg's Web site at www.cosmiccafe.com.

For anyone looking for a quick and enjoyable read for the upcoming break perhaps they should try a bit of a different path than going to Barnes & Noble and browsing the new bestsellers. Sometimes taking that chance pays off.