Soviet spy maven Finder (The Moscow Club, 1991) adapts to the disappearance of the Red Menace—without missing a step—by following the trail of $10 billion spirited out of Russia to protect it from hard-liners: a fortune in gold that's rearranging a lot of loyalties from Moscow to Washington. The hunt for the money begins when Ben Ellison—a former CIA loose cannon who's taken refuge in patent law from his bloody past (his wife Laura was killed and his boss Toby Thompson paralyzed when an East German defection went horribly wrong) and from his hotheaded nature—is pressed by CIA-director-designate Alexander Truslow to go after Vladimir Orlov, the KGB chief who arranged the transfer of the gold. The transfer was done with the help of Harrison Sinclair— Truslow's predecessor at the Agency and the late father of Ben's second wife Molly—in return for a KGB file dishing the dirt on CIA higher-ups. When Ben turns Truslow down, a CIA investigation of his broker freezes his assets—and then, when Ben grudgingly agrees to cooperate, Truslow arranges a lie-detector screening that's actually a cover for giving Ben a jolt of the extrasensory, mind-reading powers Truslow thinks he'll need to track down Orlov and the money. What Ben's extraordinary powers tell him along the way, of course, is that his CIA masters aren't just interested in returning the gold to Mother Russia: the folks Orlov's file was fingering want to cover themselves and their grasp on the missing bullion by using Ben as a cat's paw and assassinating a mysterious witness before he can blow their covert operation sky-high in Congressional testimony. Can indestructible Ben, staggering from a brace of revelations about the deaths of Laura and Sinclair, identify the witness in time to stop the assassination—or will he be killed himself, as a prefatory note darkly hints? The complex story purrs along like a high-powered race car loaded with options, even though it all boils down to Telepathic Man and a bunch of lesser guys with guns after the big score. (First printing of 100,000)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-345-38621-3
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1993
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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