A professor joins the world of academic espionage to track down stolen genetic research in this science-based thriller sequel.
In his third novel, Cooper brings back characters from his previous novel, Nondisclosure (2019): Academic Brad Parker and university detective Karen Richmond, and the latter is now a senior special agent with the FBI. After helping Richmond solve a sexual assault and murder case on his home campus, Boston Technical Institute, Parker is on sabbatical at Harvard University exploring gene manipulation. To his dismay, however, the FBI wants him to help catch Chinese spies posing as university students. Parker initially dismisses the agents’ claims as bigotry, but agrees to report any suspicious activity. With this premise, Cooper, an academic whose former affiliations include Boston University and Harvard Medical School, sets up a mystery that makes genetic engineering accessible to reader via first-person narration. For instance, during a fundraising dinner, Parker remarks that a potential donor “perked up quickly when Alice [a colleague] started showing our data on telomere length” before asking if “the ends of the chromosomes in your treated mice actually got longer...as if the mice are getting younger?” Using minimal technical terminology and nesting the science within conversation helps the novel seem authoritative without alienating readers. Cooper also uses extended scenes to heighten suspense; for example, while researching, Parker comes across papers concerning “experiments in which old mice were given infusions of blood plasma from young mice—with the result that the performance of the old mice in learning and memory tests significantly improved.” Instead of keeping the pace of the novel consistent by simply summarizing, Cooper ratchets up the tension by teasing out Parker’s discovery of a pivotal clue. Although the mystery plot would have benefited from more red herrings, the novel as a whole comes off as an effective medical mystery.
A persuasive tale of scientific intrigue.Pub Date: May 15, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 198
Publisher: Maine Authors Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: THRILLER | TECHNICAL & MEDICAL THRILLER
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
With the United States the “closest [it’s] been to war” in a lifetime, intelligence operative Jack Ryan Jr. faces stiff odds in trying to avert disaster with China.
Trouble with China begins brewing (yet again in the Clancy books) with the rendition of a Chinese scientist and the killing of his American brother, a specialist in machine learning. With a sniper attack on the German outpost of The Campus, Ryan’s “off-the-books” agency, and the downing of an American plane over the South China Sea, U.S. efforts to recover a Chinese undersea glider capable of detecting a $3 billion American stealth submarine are in jeopardy. Things look especially grim with the capture of crash survivor John Clark, Ryan’s boss and a close compadre of his father, President Jack Ryan Sr. With Ryan Sr. still shaken by the abduction of his wife a year ago and Ryan Jr. doubtful of his abilities as a team leader, it's up to intelligence director Mary Pat Foley to calm the waters with her expertise and strong will. One possible outcome is a Chinese attack on Taiwan. In Bentley’s third outing in the series, it takes a while to get past cookie cutter stuff: Many pages go by before the reader knows what all the tense language, chase scenes, and international travel are about. But the book's cool, checkerboard efficiency eventually takes hold. And the streaks of vulnerability that run through the Ryans impart a human dimension that most such thrillers lack. Bentley also takes pains to distinguish the novel from fake fiction: “Unlike in the movies, getting struck by a rifle round moving at several thousand feet per second was not insignificant.”
A well-turned, if predictable, installment in the popular series.Pub Date: May 23, 2023
ISBN: 9780593422786
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
Categories: SUSPENSE | THRILLER | SUSPENSE | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | POLITICAL, MILITARY & TERRORISM
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Did you like this book?
© Copyright 2023 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
