Spoiler alert. 

I don't want to say that Ben Mezrich is cynical, but the last page of The 37th Parallel is redacted, like a classified document, apparently as a joke. This made me angry, as it was then very clear that there was no “secret truth behind America's UFO Highway.” I had the same problem with The X-Files after a while. Individual episodes could be brilliant, but the whole mythos arc seemed endless and pointless. Dramatic tension can only be maintained for so long. As some point there has to be a resolution. 

If you can't deliver on that resolution, that's fine (I'm a scientist, and used to frustration), but don't pretend.   

Mezrich is certainly a more vivid writer and seemingly a more careful researcher than David Wilcock, the host of Ancient Aliens on the History Channel and The Ascension Mysteries, which I commented on here. This book is better written and better documented and does not rely on anonymous “sources.” But dammit, at least Wilcock lays his crazy-ass cards on the table. Mezrich follows his source, computer chip engineer and UFO investigator Chuck Zukowski, through more than twenty years of his personal quest, and by the end the only thing they know for sure is that the US government is hiding something. Well, duh (Snowden, anyone?). 

Everybody's hiding something. I got a pretty embarrassing birthmark.   

I did learn quite a bit about animal mutilations. There are some gross black & white photos on pp 194-197.    

In the history of animal mutilations – ten thousand, over the past fifty years – nobody had ever been caught or arrested.   

Every one of them had eventually been deemed unexplained.   

Well, not really, but even I don't buy this "explanation."  Foxes?

There are several pertinent facts.   

1. The animals are drained of blood before being dissected. 
2. Internal organs are taken, but sometimes only one of the paired organs. 
3. There are never any footprints or tire tracks, other than those of the investigators.   

Never addressed in the book: Where are the scavengers? Why are people even finding these carcasess in good enough shape to investigate them? Coyotes are pretty good at sniffing out poisons and pass those up, but otherwise these things should disappear down to bare bones pretty quickly. Mezrich says that Zukowski often couldn't get to them for a week or more. Where's the scavenger damage? Once he mentions flies, but that's all I remember.   

I also learned quite a bit about the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), a nationwide network of UFO investigators who maintain a database of sightings and encounters and who hold meetings. They also sell quite an array of merchandise. According to Mezrich, the majority of these investigators are not trained as scientists, though their website has a sub-page on The Scientific Method and a series of free distance learning courses. Zukowski was also frustrated at this situation and kept his distance from MUFON (although his sister was a member). Zukowski stayed independent, and was always trying to get trained scientists with real lab facilities to examine his samples.   

Robert Bigelow, a real estate billionaire who is now building inflatable space hotels, on the other hand, hired real scientists for his National Institute of Discovery Science, which for ten years looked into extraterrestrial cases and other paranormal "anomalies" out of an office in Las Vegas. It also maintained a site on Skinwalker Ranch, a hot spot for both UFO sightings and animal mutilations. Zukowski sent them some samples to analyze, and, frustrated with their response time, contemplated breaking into the place, just like any good fictional investigator would do.   

SUMMARY: Lots of entertaining tidbits if you're an information junkie like I am, but no earth-shattering secrets, as in my next review, of the Snowden movie.