Oh, the discoveries awaiting you at Dollar Tree.

Every time I’ve visited one of those “everything’s a dollar” stores, I’ve never found any reading material of value. Until just recently, when – hidden amidst endless copies of the same three romances and novelizations of DAWSON’S CREEK and that damned Olsen Twins movie – I unearthed three titles from Peter David’s six-book PSI-MAN series, originally published in 1991. I had never heard of them, but they looked like thin, fun reads, and a buck’s a buck, right?

Right! And I got more than a buck’s worth of entertainment out of the second volume in the series, proudly boasting the gotta-love-it title of PSI-MAN: DEATHSCAPE. Our protagonist is Chuck Simon, a quasi-superhero deemed “Psi-Man” by the government because he harbors extraordinary telekinetic powers, including the ability to levitate objects, converse telepathically with his German shepherd Rommel and, as we witness, make wild animals explode. Chuck’s on the run from the feds – not sure why or how, since I wasn’t able to locate book one – with a former circus trapeze artist and the aforementioned dog when they stumble upon a group of environmental extremists whose members blow up a chemical plant, toxins from which have seeped into the water supply and “altered” the nature nearby.

So we have Psi-Man and friends running around in the forest being chased by the Greenpeace-esque terrorists, who are being chased by the army, all of whom are being chased – and occasionally torn in half – by mutated bears, rabbits and raccoons. It’s awesome, like THE FUGITIVE meets PROPHECY meets ZAPPED!

DEATHSCAPE – and the rest of the PSI-MAN books, I’m sure – is the very definition of an escapist read, coming in at well under 200 pages and digestable in a single sitting. It feels highly episodic, as if it could easily be turned into a one-hour show, each of which would end as this does, with Psi-Man moving on to the next adventure. There are five left, and I intend to join him on all of ‘em.