An entertaining addition to the canon of colonial, upriver journeys.
Kater (Skills of the Warramunga, 2018, etc.) pits his Australian investigators against a Chinese opium cartel in this fourth entry in his historical espionage series.
In 1946, when an MI6 agent is shot in a poppy field in China and then vanishes, British Col. John Cook asks the two best agents of the Commonwealth Investigation Service’s Australian branch—Jamie Munro and Jack “Jacko” O’Brien—to find the missing operative and destroy an opium processing plant. According to MI6, the drugs are being transported down the Yangtze River and later sent “to the USA, the Philippines and Australia.” Munro and O’Brien are dispatched to Manila, where they meet up with American Office of Strategic Services chief Harry Williams, an old ally. They travel to Shanghai, where they meet Lee Drake, an MI6 agent who served in China and was the only witness to the missing agent’s shooting. Postwar China is hardly at peace, as the embattled forces of Chiang Kai-shek vie with the rebellious soldiers of the Chinese Communist Party; in addition, government-empowered smugglers and localized criminal gangs run amok. The CIS agents must travel up the Yangtze River in a small boat and sail deep into unfriendly territory, and what they find will lead them unexpectedly back home. Throughout this installment, Kater’s prose evokes the story’s time and place with specificity and color: “Red Brandon had desperately continued his search for the hatless man in a GI uniform whom he had first sighted in company with Roddy’s dog, Zhiming. He was accompanied by eight of the Chinese militia, only known to him as the Black Minbing.” The author once again proves to be adept at using his characters’ adventures to explore the minutiae of various countries in Asia and Oceania after World War II. That said, he always brings the action back to Australia, which fans may find a bit too predictable. The novel’s particular brand of Anglophilic nostalgia will not be every reader’s cup of tea, but those who enjoyed the previous books in the series will surely appreciate this newest one.
An entertaining addition to the canon of colonial, upriver journeys.Pub Date: March 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-921240-77-5
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Zeus Publications
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
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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