Inside Job

A short story about a professional “skeptic” who gets into a “conundrum” of trying to prove that a spirit entity is real while at the same time proving that the person channeling said entity is a fraud. Oh, and there's a love story in there about a beautiful woman having a crush on the protagonist. It's a bit cliché, but it's really more of a plot device for the story.

I found it to be a quick read, rather enjoyable at first, but then I started getting the impression that this was the author trying to put forth the “correct” worldview. I looked up H. L. Mencken, who was protrayed as the hero of the protagonist, and yikes, the portrayal of Mencken as a “champion” of skeptics in the story is very biased, coveniently omitting the darker side of the commentaries and criticisms.

So while I found the story to be ok and a little insightful into the minds of the instinctually skeptical, it also felt like the main characters were little more than mouthpieces to ridicule certain worldviews. Of course, some would see it as simple characterisation, but if so, it was overly done and somewhat distasteful.