The talented Nance, an air safety analyst, retired Air Force pilot, and civilian 737 pilot for a major airline, here keeps the tension as high and nasty as in his last two airborne thrillers, The Last Hostage (1998) and Medusa’s Child (1997). It all begins when SeaAir Flight 122 crashes over the Gulf of Mexico, a crash as inexplicable as the recent sudden loss of an Egypt Airlines plane. Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, FBI Special Agent Kat Bronsky, who has just given a talk at an airline counterterrorist panel, is heading back to the States when Robert McCabe, investigative reporter for the Washington Post, implores her to listen to a tale of murder that he believes involves terrorists. They board a 747 to fly back to the States together, but Kat is called off the plane by her boss and ordered to stay in Hong Kong. The 747 is two hours out into its flight when a white flash explodes before the cockpit, killing the pilot and blinding the copilot. Although the automatic pilot helps, there’s no one to fly or land the plane'and some amusing humor about Leslie Nielson’s air-disaster movies arises. McCabe and various passengers, none of them licensed pilots, gather in the cockpit to help the blind pilot turn back to Hong Kong and attempt to land. But they fail, taking out a control tower, and must now fly their radio- and radar-disabled plane to Thailand through lightning storms and other deviltries. Among the pilot’s new aides are a lippy 14-year-old boy, who becomes the hands-on pilot, and an unsinkable Kathy Bates/Molly Brown character, Dallas Nielson (yes, Nielson). Airborne, Nance’s hand for crackling intensity remains peerless. Once on the ground, the standard figures of melodrama emerge in the forms of deep-dyed villains, law-enforcement fieldworkers, and the harassed US president. If this saga is ever filmed, the screenwriter should toss its second half.
Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2000
ISBN: 0-399-14594-X
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2000
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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