This sequel is just what the doctor ordered and gives the budding franchise a shot of adrenaline.
A hospital’s controversial program puts a physician and his family in harm’s way.
It is a groan-worthy pun to say that Edwards’ (Final Mercy, 2013) Dr. Jack Forester sequel starts off with a bang. But the blast that rocks the New Canterbury Medical Center wounds 31, takes the life of Forester’s “teacher, mentor, friend, advisor, ally,” and sets in motion this thriller. At issue is something called the Gilchrist Tube Project. It is the hospital’s top priority, but the dead Dr. James Gavin had reservations about it. So does a biochemist, who shares these opinions with Forester at Gavin’s memorial service. “If something were to happen to me,” he confides, “I would want someone like you to know.” Not long after, the man is reported missing. It just so happens that he was the lover of the wife of the hospital’s new dean. She asks her friend Zellie, the former investigative reporter now married to Forester, to look into the matter (“You know how to dig into things”). Zellie finds that bad things happen to those who oppose the program and want to reveal its secrets. What is the Gilchrist Tube Project? Originally, it was “designed to return a woman’s fertility when her fallopian tubes are damaged.” To reveal how it will truly be used would be a spoiler, but what is a thriller without a “hidden agenda”? Meanwhile, the bomber, a drug-addicted war veteran, is in thrall to a shadowy organization that is determined to stop the implementation of the project at all costs. When, following the initial bombing, the hospital decides to proceed with the program, the group dispatches its soldier to help “give Satan and his servants a message they will never forget.” Within the framework of this well-sustained, suspenseful thriller, Edwards effectively examines issues of medical morality and ethics, corporate greed, and office politics. At one point, Forester tells Zellie why Gavin, “an old-fashioned idealist,” never liked the Gilchrist Tube Project: “Because it was being pushed so hard. And the funding sources weren’t transparent. That wasn’t how things should be.” While the appearance of sinister villains pulling the strings behind the scenes borders on cliché, other key players are empathetically fleshed out with motives that, while reprehensible, are true to their characters.
This sequel is just what the doctor ordered and gives the budding franchise a shot of adrenaline.Pub Date: May 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9890855-2-6
Page Count: 388
Publisher: Pascal Editions
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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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