Klingler (Rats, 2014) offers a techno-thriller about digital music piracy and the people it affects most.
Detective Qigiq is visiting San Francisco to help investigate a crime that’s a bit more modern than those in his native rural Alaska. He’s partnered with Detective Kandy Dreeson to investigate a box containing severed fingers that Robina, a music student, received in the mail. The digits are sealed in a plastic bag with a sticker reading, “Don't Steal Music.” Robina says the fingers belong to her roommate, Sally Bellowi, a cellist in the string quartet Fourtunate. In their quest to find the missing Sally, the detectives investigate her many lovers, including a music professor, a rock guitarist, and a man called “Mony,” among others. Elsewhere, in northern California, Eddy Blake, the CEO of a company called Silver Platter, struggles to successfully launch Invisible Hand—software that can scan a computer for illegally downloaded music and then frighten or embarrass the “file-sharer” into never doing so again. Just as he prepares to release it onto the Internet, YouTube footage appears of Sally, his ex-lover—gagged, terrified and likely being raped. Qigiq and Kandy fear that Sally’s kidnapper will finish her off and then choose a new victim. Klingler makes supreme use of his tech knowledge in a grisly mystery that strives to address the ethics of content ownership. His effortlessly clever prose makes the subject thoroughly entertaining, as in a line describing a lawyer as “so uptight he squeaked coming through the door.” The author’s awe of musicians is also apparent: “She played...faster and harder, louder, two notes at a time, the energy filling his ears, her raw beauty filling his eyes.” Unfortunately, for every instance of such respect, there are several that highlight the book’s guys-only tone, in which women are casually objectified: “Eddy…watched as the kid couldn’t resist the opportunity to twist his big neck around and ogle Alicia’s rear as he passed….Eddy didn’t much care if the kid looked, he was just jealous he wasn’t getting that view.” Readers may be surprised to see such a thoughtful, well-constructed tale lower itself to keep certain readers’ attention.
A smart but indulgently sexual thriller.
Pub Date: March 19, 2014
ISBN: 978-1941156032
Page Count: 600
Publisher: Cartosi LLC
Review Posted Online: July 24, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
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.
