Readers probably won’t lie awake worrying whether all this could really happen. Fast-moving, implausible fun.
Ancient knowledge and present-day evildoers threaten the world order in the latest entry in Cussler and Morrison’s Oregon series (Typhoon Fury, 2017).
In 261 B.C.E., Indian ruler Ashoka the Terrible had nine Scrolls of Knowledge that together would help someone rule the world. Over the millennia, they were kept separately by Nine Unknown Men who, until 200 years ago, were all from India. Now, eight of the nine possessors have a plan for world domination, while the ninth, Mallik, has a “new goal to save the human race.” His Colossus is “the most advanced artificial intelligence project ever devised” and would fulfill Ashoka’s dream “to harness ultimate knowledge for the benefit of mankind.” It would concentrate untold power in the hands of a few, but it may become humans’ master instead of its servant. How those old scrolls contain so much unique and critical information is left unanswered; for example, how did the Scroll for communications help one man build a giant telecom empire? It’s not the strongest premise for a thriller, but never mind. The heroes are an all-American patriotic crew on the Oregon, “the most advanced spy ship ever built.” The ship, sailing in the Indian Ocean, is disguised to look like a sorry mess from the outside, but it’s really a high-tech wonder. The crew’s challenges include a missile targeting the U.S. naval base at remote Diego Garcia with a payload of the deadliest-ever Russian nerve agent Novichok. Also, crew members risk getting cooked as they swim near molten underwater lava. Onboard a vessel, they may be gunned down by a machine gun hidden inside a cake or cut down by a flying hunga munga. All the world’s computers may become disabled by an electromagnetic pulse, and Colossus may achieve singularity.
Readers probably won’t lie awake worrying whether all this could really happen. Fast-moving, implausible fun.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1906-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
A gloriously exciting yarn whose spell will end the moment you turn the last page.
What’s worse than learning that your wife’s been abducted and murdered by a madman? Learning that she hasn’t—in this taut, twisty dose of suspenseful hokum from the gifted chronicler of sleuthing sports-agent Myron Bolitar (Darkest Fear, 2000, etc.).
For all the pain Manhattan pediatrician Dr. David Beck has suffered in the eight years since his childhood sweetheart Elizabeth, his bride of seven months, was torn away from him and later found dead, the case itself was open and shut: She was tortured, branded, and slain by the perp calling himself KillRoy, now doing life on 14 counts of homicide. But the case pops open again with the discovery of two corpses buried near the murder site, along with the baseball bat that was used to incapacitate Beck during the abduction, and with a jolting e-mail Beck’s received from somebody who looks just like Elizabeth. If the message is bogus, how was it faked? And if it’s genuine, why has Elizabeth been hiding for eight years, why has she come back now, and whose body did her father, New York homicide cop Hoyt Parker, identify as hers and bury in her grave? A face-to-face rendezvous that Beck’s mysterious correspondent sets up in Washington Square promises answers—but when it’s time for the meeting, Beck is being hunted by the police for a murder a lot less than eight years old. Aided by celebrity lawyer Hester Crimstein, grateful drug-dealer Tyrese Barton, and his own sister Linda’s lover—that glamorous plus-size model Shauna—Beck goes up against even more improbable foes, from ruthless zillionaire developer Griffin Scope to bare-hands killer Eric Wu, in a quest for answers that’ll have you burning the midnight oil till 3:00
Pub Date: June 12, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-33555-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2001
A storytelling machine, Jance in her 41st (Trial by Fire, 2009, etc.) is at the top of her game and just about irresistible.
Jance offers that rare—and welcome—hybrid: the suspense novel with heart.
Jonathan Southard is one of those unhappy men whose unrequited love affair with life has caused a volatile, long-term, internal simmering. One day the mixture explodes, resulting in a crime that is both horrific and, in a sense at least, foreseeable. He shoots his wife, her dog and their two young children, construing this last as an act of mercy inasmuch as it will spare them an aftermath of humiliation and shame. Having wiped out his San Diego family, he sets off for Tucson and the home of his mother, planning to clean the slate. He’s always hated Abby Tennant, attributing to her voluminous maternal shortcomings, of which she is largely innocent. With less difficulty than Southard expected, the bodies are discovered, clues are put together, identities established and soon enough the manhunt is on, participated in by multiple police forces from several states. Among these are the elite Shadow Wolves, Indians who patrol reservation land near the Mexican border. Enter Dan Pardeey. Half Anglo, half Apache, he has a special connection to the small survivor of another of Southard’s monstrous crimes. Angelina Enos, age four, has remained alive only by virtue of being tiny enough to escape notice. Eerily, this parallels Pardee’s own long-ago experience, and when she reaches out to him he has no choice but to respond. Because he does, his life is irrevocably changed and, in a kind of chain reaction, so are the lives of a variety of other players, one way or another, for good or ill, in Jance’s absorbing cast.
A storytelling machine, Jance in her 41st (Trial by Fire, 2009, etc.) is at the top of her game and just about irresistible.Pub Date: July 27, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-123924-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2010
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