Slap-dash plotting, pedestrian prose, stick figure hero: a terminal case.
Medical thriller about a feckless young doctor in over the head he ought to have examined.
Take that whole risky business with Restore Tabs, for instance. Anyone playing with a full deck would have known the darn things were too good to be true. Wake up, heedless (if handsome) young Dr. Steven McClaren. Enhances breast size, increases sex drive, chases wrinkles—and that’s just for starters, he’s told. So there’s gullible Dr. Steve irresponsibly doing TV commercials for Ecolabs, the herb firm that makes and markets Restore Tabs—and he’s doing it simply because his old college buddy, the company’s CEO, has asked him to. In the meantime, that hot new miracle product, “the female Viagara,” has suddenly begun to cause vaginal bleeding in a goodly percentage of those persuaded to use it. Oh, mindless Dr. Steve. Equally ill-advised is his torrid affair with Ecolabs exec Francesca Taylor. Never mind that “bar none, she had the greatest body” he’d ever seen, the point is that only a dim bulb could have failed to spot her as a distaff Iago. And Dr. Steve pays a draconian price for the lust in his heart. Thanks to Francesca and her several co-conspirators, he’s bitten by a poisonous Australian jellyfish, nearly flattened by a charging Mercedes, knocked down, stabbed, and burnt out—escaping the flames that consume his house at the very last minute. Why are Francesca and friends in such a conspiratorial frenzy? A get-rich scam involving Restore Tabs seems to be at the heart of it, though it’s hard to be definitive when a plot becomes as muddled as this one. And also hard to care much when Dr. Steve muddles through this seventh try for physician/novelist Shobin (The Unborn, 1981, etc.).
Slap-dash plotting, pedestrian prose, stick figure hero: a terminal case.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-26686-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
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
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.
Coulter’s treasured FBI agents take on two cases marked by danger and personal involvement.
Dillon Savitch and his wife, Lacey Sherlock, have special abilities that have served them well in law enforcement (Paradox, 2018, etc.). But that doesn't prevent Sherlock’s car from hitting a running man after having been struck by a speeding SUV that runs a red light. The runner, though clearly injured, continues on his way and disappears. Not so the SUV driver, a security engineer for the Bexholt Group, which has ties to government agencies. Sherlock’s own concussion causes memory loss so severe that she doesn’t recognize Savitch or remember their son, Sean. The whole incident seems more suspicious when a blood test from the splatter of the man Sherlock hit reveals that he’s Justice Cummings, an analyst for the CIA. The agency’s refusal to cooperate makes Savitch certain that Bexholt is involved in a deep-laid plot. Meanwhile, Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith is visiting friends who run a cafe in the touristy Virginia town of Gaffers Ridge. Hammersmith, who has psychic abilities, is taken aback when he hears in his mind a woman’s cry for help. Reporter Carson DeSilva, who came to the area to interview a Nobel Prize winner, also has psychic abilities, and she overhears the thoughts of Rafer Bodine, a young man who has apparently kidnapped and possibly murdered three teenage girls. Unluckily, she blurts out her thoughts, and she’s snatched and tied up in a cellar by Bodine. Bodine may be a killer, but he’s also the nephew of the sheriff and the son of the local bigwig. So the sheriff arrests Hammersmith and refuses to accept his FBI credentials. Bodine's mother has psychic powers strong enough to kill, but she meets her match in Hammersmith, DeSilva, Savitch, and Sherlock.
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9365-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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