An evil corporation takes its pursuit of consumer loyalty to a whole new level in this corporate espionage novel.
There’s an unabashedly old-fashioned adventure story at the heart of Hakala’s lean, tensely plotted novel, a throwback adventure in which the good guys might say things like, “You'll never get away with this!” and the bad guys might reply, “Oh, but I shall.” Hakala marries his melodrama to a precisely controlled, contemporary plot and fills the whole thing with snappy dialogue. Two seemingly irreconcilable stories kick off the book: former Wall Street “king of the hill” Thornton “Thorny” Walsh has been relegated to a basement office in the wake of his firm’s merger with a gigantic Wall Street outfit, and idealistic Boston police officer Traci Ross is investigating a baffling series of rapes. These two separate worlds are brought together when an extremely shady businessman, hiding behind the shell of an innocent-seeming pet food company, begins a carefully orchestrated (and effectively described—Hakala is skilled at plot kinetics) plan to subvert the world economy. True to the Sam Spade template, Walsh stoically endures quite a bit of danger (including threats from a gigantic Samoan who “eats cops for breakfast”) and manhandling in order to uncover the villain’s diabolical plans. Ross is a considerably less fleshed-out character (and, despite her vocation, far less capable of taking care of herself in tight situations), but the book’s chemistry saves her from being the post-modern concession she might otherwise have become. Still, it’s Walsh who keeps things moving forward (and who gets all the best lines). He’s never very likable, but he makes the novel work. Despite Hakala’s evident zeal on the subject of food additives and government quality controls, the book never descends into polemic; this is first and foremost entertainment. An engaging, well-executed thriller.
Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2011
ISBN: 978-0615540771
Page Count: 363
Publisher: Cressida
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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