An underwhelming tale of nukes, coups, and spies by thriller veteran Coppel (Wars and Winters, 1993, etc.). Soyuz, a nationalist group seeking to reunite the historic Russian empire, infiltrates Russian government and military offices, including the command of the submarine Pravda. To provide a diversion during Soyuz's planned Moscow coup of the following year, the Pravda crew plants a device in the waters of northern Canada that will emit an electronic pulse and destroy US communication systems. Participating crew members are killed to ensure silence, but one scientist and one witness survive. Marine biologist Arkady Karmann flees the sinking Pravda off the Cuban coast, climbs out of the shark-infested waters onto a Honduran fishing boat with all but one hand, and begins a nearly year-long trek through Central America. The witness, left-wing activist Anna Neville, is fired at by the Pravda as she shoots nature photography from an airplane, but she later assumes that she was hit by an American submarine. In November of the following year, traditional, craggy Marine John Morgan is assigned to keep her from making accusations against the US. Despite their ideological differences, they ignite sexually, and Morgan becomes her bodyguard when she is marked for assassination by Marina Suslova, a Soyuz agent who seduces a male reporter and a female National Security Advisor assistant. The device ticks away under the Arctic ice and, true to Soviet inefficiency, becomes flooded and is rendered useless, but its plutonium reactor leaks. We should feel the tension of a countdown as the Americans and Canadians search for and dismantle the reactor, but Coppel cannot sustain it. Likewise, the narrative lacks the violence, action, and high technology that might excuse its vapid characters. It's enough to make you nostalgic for the Cold War.
Pub Date: Oct. 17, 1994
ISBN: 1-55611-411-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.
Another surprise from an author who never writes the same novel twice.
Though Whitehead has earned considerable critical acclaim for his earlier work—in particular his debut (The Intuitionist, 1999) and its successor (John Henry Days, 2001)—he’ll likely reach a wider readership with his warmest novel to date. Funniest as well, though there have been flashes of humor throughout his writing. The author blurs the line between fiction and memoir as he recounts the coming-of-age summer of 15-year-old Benji Cooper in the family’s summer retreat of New York’s Sag Harbor. “According to the world, we were the definition of paradox: black boys with beach houses,” writes Whitehead. Caucasians are only an occasional curiosity within this idyll, and parents are mostly absent as well. Each chapter is pretty much a self-contained entity, corresponding to a rite of passage: getting the first job, negotiating the mysteries of the opposite sex. There’s an accident with a BB gun and plenty of episodes of convincing someone older to buy beer, but not much really happens during this particular summer. Yet by the end of it, Benji is well on his way to becoming Ben, and he realizes that he is a different person than when the summer started. He also realizes that this time in his life will eventually live only in memory. There might be some distinctions between Benji and Whitehead, though the novelist also spent his youthful summers in Sag Harbor and was the same age as Benji in 1985, when the novel is set. Yet the first-person narrator has the novelist’s eye for detail, craft of character development and analytical instincts for sharp social commentary.
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.Pub Date: April 28, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-385-52765-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2009
BOOK TO SCREEN
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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