by Dan Welch ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 28, 2018
An inventive tale by a first-time author who’s off to a fast start.
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A blend of sci-fi and courtroom drama that takes readers into a brave new world of criminal investigation.
In New York state, the Osiris team, headed by prosecutor Freddy Logan, has racked up an impressive track record of convictions due to their access to a secret source of information. Logan prosecutes financial malfeasance as treason, and death sentences await those who are convicted. However, the Osiris team seeks a sentence of “death and seven,” which means that the bodies don’t have to be released for seven years, giving federal investigators plenty of time to “sift and grind through” seized materials “with unremitting precision.” The corpses are sent off to a hidden lab called Glimmer Development, where researchers Kenneth Conklin and Gregory Ellerby, in exchange for funding, use technology they’ve developed to extract damning evidence from their brains, which they forward to Osiris for future prosecutions. This unethical arrangement might have continued successfully for years, but then Amanda Wilson, an assistant at Glimmer, feels guilty about how one of the “patients” is treated and sends a letter to the dead woman’s lawyer. Then Kenny, jealous about Gregory and Amanda’s relationship, decides to become a whistle-blower; the problem is that he mistakenly approaches technology thieves instead of reporters. Debut author Welch does a thorough job of examining what can happen when science outpaces regulation, posing the age-old science-fiction question: Just because something can be done, should it? However, readers may find it hard to feel much sympathy for the victims in Welch’s scenario, who are consistently portrayed as the greedy few seeking to profit off of the honest many. The author conjures a realistic cast of characters, including scientists and lawyers who are more concerned with results than consequences as well as a handful of relative innocents caught in the middle. Cynicism, rather than morality, triumphs in the end; in a world of advancing technology, the dead can’t even take their secrets to the grave.
An inventive tale by a first-time author who’s off to a fast start.Pub Date: July 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9990205-8-6
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Immortal Works Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Colson Whitehead ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 28, 2009
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
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BOOK TO SCREEN
by Michael Crichton ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 7, 1990
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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