Kirkus Reviews QR Code
THE ELVIS FILES: Was His Death Faked? by Gail Brewer-Giorgio

THE ELVIS FILES: Was His Death Faked?

By

Pub Date: Oct. 22nd, 1990
Publisher: Shapolsky--dist. by Carol

A mind-boggling excursion into a world where Elvis lives on incognito, shopping Kalamazoo K-Marts while plotting his return as a world savior in the year 1993. According to Brewer-Giorgio, two ""national polls"" indicate that 85% of Americans believe that Elvis lives--which may help to explain why the author's 1988 paperback Is Elvis Alive? sold a million copies. In this hodgepodge of a sequel, the nation's premier Elvis-sleuth reviews previous ""evidence"" that the singer faked his death (why is his name misspelled on his gravestone? Why has no one claimed his life insurance?) and presents some new clues: the handwriting on the death certificate resembles Elvis's own; the US government rejected a stamp in his honor because, as the Postmaster General allegedly put it, ""the rules for entry to the philatelic hall of fame require a person to be demonstratably dead for ten years."" And there's also the numerological and astrological evidence, not to mention enough blurry photos and sightings to shame the Loch Ness Monster--all of which Brewer-Giorgio, though never quite declaring Elvis alive, analyzes with a true believer's energy. So what's this all about, anyway? Raymond Moody gives a hint in his noncommittal introduction (""about some of the less well-understood manifestations of the human process of mourning""); but some may prefer the author's take: that Elvis may indeed live on, in hiding as a federal narc or on a 16-year spiritual odyssey (just like Jesus). And then there's the 20-minute audio tape accompanying the book, which Brewer-Giorgio claims records a phone call she received in October 1988. With her high-tech recording equipment unavailable, she apparently had to record the call--darn!--on a ""bulky old"" machine; but behind the static, the careful listener can make out a voice that sounds just like Elvis's--offering a quick thrill and a shiver of fun, just like the rest of this arcane but delightfully wacky package.