A DIFFERENT KIND OF RAIN

by DeWitt S. Copp ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 26, 1978

Cloud-seeding--and its potential for creepy evil--provides the convincingly factual hook for this zippy, relatively adult, but not completely satisfying Canadian-American action-suspense. John Erickson, an indefatigable journalist and blandly likable narrator, is urgently summoned to Quebec by his pilot-chum RenÉ Picard--who flies him to a little lac where RenÉ has seen green rain (!) falling and where all the wildlife is dead. Tout mort! Tout mort! Erickson and RenÉ collect some dead fish in an ice chest for evidence, but the chest disappears before Erickson can reach the authorities, and then RenÉ disappears in mid-flight. ""Paranoia? Not in this time, not in this world!"" Thus geared up, Erickson tries vainly to elicit action from his Washington bureaucrat contacts, at the same time remembering and investigating the one scientist known to have developed total expertise in rain-making: Angus MacMurry, who made cloud-seeding history in Iran but was harassed by the CIA, driven to retirement and--recently--to suicide. Could MacMurry's skills have been used to create this hideous green precip--with or without the knowledge of (everybody's favorite villain these days) the CIA? With MacMurry's bitter daughter for a low-key love interest, Erickson forges on in typical thriller-hero manner, barely surviving direct ingestion of the green fumes before the rather disappointing denouement trickles down. Not quite focused enough to zap in its obvious topical Warning, and not vigorously sustained throughout--but worthy, efficient adventure work from the author of The Far Side.

Pub Date: June 26, 1978

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1978

Categories: FICTION