An abundance of information, little intrigue and even less drama.
Murder at a Montana-based laboratory exposes the private grievances and fraternizations of the lab’s employees as well as a Russian plot to acquire biological weapons.
At the annual summer picnic for the Research Institute for Applied Immunology, Dr. Derek Meyer, the laboratory’s director of operations, is found dead in his car, the cause of death a mystery. Less than six months later, Dr. Jim Dellinger, the executive director of the same facility’s Department of Diagnostic Laboratories, is also found dead, shot in the back on the Institute’s grounds in Greeneville, Mont. Unequipped to deal with even the possibility of murder, the lab calls in the FBI to investigate, and agents find themselves immersed in a seemingly unremarkable workplace, where interoffice romances abound; even the genius scientists have the typical disdain for their bosses, whom they see as little more than financial officers and bureaucrats. Research at the lab is far from commonplace, however, and the feds soon find out the unassuming laboratory is ground zero for stem cell research, gene therapy and even the study of biological agents, making it a target for both industrial and international espionage. Heifets (African Exposure, 2010) uses the FBI’s questions to delve deeper into these subjects and numerous others ranging from Russian history to genetically modified foods as he attempts to use the veneer of a murder mystery to introduce these wide-ranging subjects. However, the dialogue they are presented in feels unnatural, more like dense lectures than conversations, with each lab employee just a little too polite, a little too cordial, especially for people dealing with the deaths of their co-workers while they themselves are possibly suspects. Though these long-winded discourses are frequently informative, well-researched, even timely, they dominate the novel so as to overpower its narrative, leaving little room for character development. When it is finally revealed that Russian spies are targeting the lab, the specifics seem anticlimactic because they have been given no more emphasis than anything else.
An abundance of information, little intrigue and even less drama.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-1480909397
Page Count: 132
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Co.
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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