Alpert, one of the best writers after Michael Crichton at transforming futuristic science into believable fiction, devises...
In Alpert's latest nanotech thriller, a space probe from a solar system 200 light-years away lands with an explosive bang in a marginal area of Manhattan, infecting several park regulars with malevolent alien technology.
Inwood Hill Park, a historic piece of old New York near the Hudson River, is the site of the crash, where black metallic tentacles snake out from the bowling ball–like probe, hook into the city's power grid, and shock the unsuspecting humans. The first of its targets is Joe, a one-time doctor who has fallen on such drunken hard times after his wife kicked him out that he sleeps in the park in a cardboard box. Injected with a brain implant, he is issued commands from a voice inside his head. Dorothy, a former minister suffering from cancer, is spiked in the foot by a tentacle when she goes to help Joe and is introduced to an even worse kind of suffering. After Emilio, a former gang member, comes into contact with the alien metal, he finds himself gunning down Special Tactics soldiers called to the scene. The fate of the world is largely left in the hands of NASA Sky Survey expert Sarah Pooley. When she first detected the object crashing to Earth, she suspected it was a Russian probe. Now, she only wishes it were. Alpert (The Six, 2015, etc.) does a masterful job of establishing this grave threat to humankind; the book is full of unsettling moments. But as fresh and convincing as his vision is, it runs aground in the home stretch. The ending, including tepid explanations of the probe's origins, feels rushed. And in indicting mankind's violent and destructive ways, the AI voice of the aliens, Emissary, comes across as a pale imitation of Klaatu, the humanoid in The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Alpert, one of the best writers after Michael Crichton at transforming futuristic science into believable fiction, devises such a scary scenario here, it's a shame he doesn't develop it further.Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-06541-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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