APOCALYPSE

In his latest adventure, former Marine Ethan Warner—who investigates weird occurrences for the feds when not chasing down bail jumpers in Chicago—probes the disappearance of an ex-NASA physicist who possesses a certain kind of second sight.

The physicist, Charles Purcell, has just fled his home in Miami, leaving behind his brutally murdered wife and daughter. Despite appearances, he didn’t kill them, as becomes evident through the text messages he sends to Warner and his revved-up young partner, Nicola Lopez. The texts, which announce with eerie precision what's going to happen next, and when, implicate big-time Florida philanthropist Joaquin Abell, head of a dark conspiracy. Behind a supposed commitment to helping disaster victims, Abell is devising evil schemes to gain unheard degrees of power and wealth. In his research facility deep beneath the Bermuda Triangle, he's conducting shocking experiments with the space-time continuum—carrying on research his father and Purcell’s were keenly involved with in the mid-1940s. Warner, whose fiancee disappeared without a trace in the Middle East, is driven by the possibility he can look through time and find out what happened to her. More pressingly, the feds are wondering what happened to a private jet that apparently fell from the sky. Crawford (Immortal, 2013, etc.) is an able storyteller who smoothly orchestrates the plot’s twists and turns and creates some solid characters. But Apocalypse falls short of the blockbuster promised by its title. In the end, knowing the future becomes almost ho-hum.  

Time is of the essence in this techno-thriller, which boasts a nifty premise but doesn’t go far enough with it.