Formulaic but reasonably fun provided you have no expectations concerning probability or literary quality.
It’s textbook synergy, as the marketers say: A media-savvy ex-president teams up with the ringmaster of mass-produced pop fiction to churn out a by-the-numbers thriller.
It’s a telling sign of the times that the very first bit of text in this scrappy potboiler by Clinton (Back to Work: Why We Need Smart Government for a Strong Economy, 2011, etc.) and Patterson (NYPD Red, 2012, etc.) is a shoutout to the lawyer who brought them together “and occasionally cracked the whip.” That said, Clinton lifts generous hunks of his own presidential biography in this yarn celebrating the gnarly President Jonathan Lincoln Duncan (think William Jefferson Clinton, natch), who is being assailed on every side. There are Islamic terrorists, but worse, the Congressional committees grilling him from Page 1 on, questioning Benghazi-like episodes in which the Sons of Jihad have been mowing down innocent Americans. Then there’s the “tall, leggy, busty” assassin who’s coming for the Prez without rancor but with clinical certainty. It doesn’t help that Duncan’s veep—“a parasite, living off her host”—may be plotting to take over, nor that the media is given to leaking that he intends “to try to cut a deal with the House Speaker to spare me impeachment if I agree to a single term in office.” And did we mention the killer computer virus that’s about to turn the switch on the information age? What’s a beleaguered politico to do when the klieg lights are on and the bullets are flying? Hunker down and hit the mattresses—but then go all Jack Ryan or maybe even all Dubya (“In the coming days…we will find out who are America’s friends and who are America’s enemies. Nobody will want to be an enemy”), recruit a Lisbeth Salander or two, line up NATO pals and maybe even the Russkis, and go mano a mano with the assembled bad guys, foreign and domestic.
Formulaic but reasonably fun provided you have no expectations concerning probability or literary quality.Pub Date: June 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-41269-8
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Little, Brown and Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
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SEEN & HEARD
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days...
In 1876, professor Edward Cope takes a group of students to the unforgiving American West to hunt for dinosaur fossils, and they make a tremendous discovery.
William Jason Tertullius Johnson, son of a shipbuilder and beneficiary of his father’s largess, isn’t doing very well at Yale when he makes a bet with his archrival (because every young man has one): accompany “the bone professor” Othniel Marsh to the West to dig for dinosaur fossils or pony up $1,000, but Marsh will only let Johnson join if he has a skill they can use. They need a photographer, so Johnson throws himself into the grueling task of learning photography, eventually becoming proficient. When Marsh and the team leave without him, he hitches a ride with another celebrated paleontologist, Marsh’s bitter rival, Edward Cope. Despite warnings about Indian activity, into the Judith badlands they go. It’s a harrowing trip: they weather everything from stampeding buffalo to back-breaking work, but it proves to be worth it after they discover the teeth of what looks to be a giant dinosaur, and it could be the discovery of the century if they can only get them back home safely. When the team gets separated while transporting the bones, Johnson finds himself in Deadwood and must find a way to get the bones home—and stay alive doing it. The manuscript for this novel was discovered in Crichton’s (Pirate Latitudes, 2009, etc.) archives by his wife, Sherri, and predates Jurassic Park (1990), but if readers are looking for the same experience, they may be disappointed: it’s strictly formulaic stuff. Famous folk like the Earp brothers make appearances, and Cope and Marsh, and the feud between them, were very real, although Johnson is the author’s own creation. Crichton takes a sympathetic view of American Indians and their plight, and his appreciation of the American West, and its harsh beauty, is obvious.
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days of American paleontology.Pub Date: May 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-247335-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
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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