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THE FALL

Relentlessly paves the way for what promises to be an epic third book.

The second book in Guillermo del Toro (director of Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, etc.) and Chuck Hogan's (Devils in Exile, 2010, etc.) The Strain trilogy finds civilization teetering on the brink.

The Strain (2009), the first book in the trilogy, was built on a compelling premise: What if vampires were not campy, caped bloodsuckers, or dark-but-hunky Twilight-esque heartthrobs, but rather the victims of a ravenous blood-borne parasite? And what if, as part of an elaborate plan, an ancient carrier of said parasites set out to sow its bloodsucking oats by starting an epidemic in New York City? A vampire threat like that calls for an epidemiologist, in this case Dr. Ephraim Goodweather of the CDC. The Strain closed with Ephraim and his companions—CDC colleague (and sometime love interest) Dr. Nora Martinez, exterminator Vasiliy Fet and Holocaust survivor and seasoned vampire hunter Abraham Setrakian—narrowly failing to destroy the Master, orchestrator of the outbreak, as his pandemic was starting to pick up steam. As this book opens, things have gone from worse to much, much worse. With more and more of its citizens turning into vampires, New York plunges into anarchy. Dr. Goodweather and his cohorts face increasingly long odds as they attempt to stem the tide, while protecting Dr. Goodweather's son Zach from his mother, a newly minted vampire bent on "turning" her beloved son. Meanwhile, the Master, working with sickly but fabulously wealthy Eldritch Palmer, continues to engineer the contagion's spread and the collapse of human society, much to the chagrin of a group of powerful vampires known as the Ancients, who prefer to wield their substantial power and influence from the shadows. The key to stopping the Master seems to lie in a very old, silver-bound book, but against the Master's minions and Palmer's wealth and influence, the book appears to be well out of our heroes’ reach. The series stands out from the recent spate of vampire-themed entertainment thanks to its semi-scientific premise, convincing characters and wealth of almost cinematically vivid scenes of terror. This book continues in the same chilling vein.

Relentlessly paves the way for what promises to be an epic third book.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2010

ISBN: 978-0-06-155822-1

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: July 26, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2010

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A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

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

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DRAGON TEETH

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

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