Another enjoyably complicated, modestly engaging spy-arama for British agent Herbie Kruger (The Nostradamus Traitor, 1979), that Mahler-loving, hard-drinking, Nazi-bred teddy bear of a spy. The labyrinth begins when Herbie is alerted that KGB spymaster Jacob Vascovsky has killed himself and that his aide-de-camp Capt. Pavel Mistochenkov has defected to Berlin and will speak only to Big Herbie. So Herbie conducts a long interrogation of Mistochenkov—which sometimes verges on ale Carre parody—and learns with horror that back in the 1960s his six-man spy team, the Schnitzer Group, was no secret to the Russians, was feeding back Russian disinformation, and included two double-agents! Furthermore, Herbie learns that his current top spy system includes a traitor and source of fake information: his own former mistress, Luzia Gabell, is a double agent (and was the late KGB spymaster's mistress!) So Herbie now leaves for Berlin, to save what's left of his team from the Gabell woman. And the search for answers leads to triple-crosses, to East Berlin, to another ex-mistress, and to suspicions that the whole shebang (from the KGB spymaster's suicide on) may have been a fantastical set-up. Le Carre fans may not take too well to Gardner's tongue-in-cheeky touches; and straight-suspense addicts will find the convolutions here beyond the pale. But Herbie brings out the best in Gardner—and those with a taste for spy-mazes, erudite cartooning, and/or Mahler (Herbie's addiction) will find this a special sort of espionage treat.
Pub Date: March 15, 1981
ISBN: 0892960973
Page Count: -
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1981
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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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