A successful currency speculator under pressure leaps out of the frying pan and into sci-fi territory in this torrid, over-plotted tale.
Palo Alto hedge fund manager Timothy Van Bender has it all: the understanding wife, the Yale connections, the gorgeous secretary, the BMW. The first sign that he’s losing it is emphatic enough to have ended most novels. A sudden surge in the price of the yen, against which the Osiris Fund II has bet heavily, leaves the fund short a cool $24 million. Since Timothy didn’t get where he is by hesitating, he instructs his numbers guy, Jay (the Kid) Strauss, to double down on his original bet, in effect betting the firm that the yen will drop. At first things go pretty much as you’d expect. The yen doesn’t drop enough. Leading Osiris investor Pinky Dewer demands to pull his money out. Timothy sweats bullets. But then his problems take a bizarre turn. His wife Katherine telephones him from Big Sur a few days after she’s celebrated their anniversary by asking him for $150,000 to say that she’s terminally ill and plans to take her life. When Det. Ned Neiderhoffer, of the Palo Alto PD, investigates, he finds every indication that Katherine went through with her plan—except for a body. Sunk in grief but still dimly aware that the moment of his complete financial ruin is rapidly approaching, Timothy is ill-equipped for the news that comes when he traces the missing $150,000 to a mysterious Dr. Clarence Ho: Days before she died, Katherine made arrangements to have Dr. Ho copy her brain. Timothy can communicate with her via keyboard, but what she really wants is for her consciousness to be implanted in a new body like that of Tricia Fountain, his impossibly beautiful secretary. From that point on, complications snowball in ways guaranteed to keep you up all night. Klein (Con Ed, 2007) lards this preposterous tale with so many telling details about Timothy’s lifestyle and psychology that you’ll be swept up right along with him.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7278-8051-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days...
In 1876, professor Edward Cope takes a group of students to the unforgiving American West to hunt for dinosaur fossils, and they make a tremendous discovery.
William Jason Tertullius Johnson, son of a shipbuilder and beneficiary of his father’s largess, isn’t doing very well at Yale when he makes a bet with his archrival (because every young man has one): accompany “the bone professor” Othniel Marsh to the West to dig for dinosaur fossils or pony up $1,000, but Marsh will only let Johnson join if he has a skill they can use. They need a photographer, so Johnson throws himself into the grueling task of learning photography, eventually becoming proficient. When Marsh and the team leave without him, he hitches a ride with another celebrated paleontologist, Marsh’s bitter rival, Edward Cope. Despite warnings about Indian activity, into the Judith badlands they go. It’s a harrowing trip: they weather everything from stampeding buffalo to back-breaking work, but it proves to be worth it after they discover the teeth of what looks to be a giant dinosaur, and it could be the discovery of the century if they can only get them back home safely. When the team gets separated while transporting the bones, Johnson finds himself in Deadwood and must find a way to get the bones home—and stay alive doing it. The manuscript for this novel was discovered in Crichton’s (Pirate Latitudes, 2009, etc.) archives by his wife, Sherri, and predates Jurassic Park (1990), but if readers are looking for the same experience, they may be disappointed: it’s strictly formulaic stuff. Famous folk like the Earp brothers make appearances, and Cope and Marsh, and the feud between them, were very real, although Johnson is the author’s own creation. Crichton takes a sympathetic view of American Indians and their plight, and his appreciation of the American West, and its harsh beauty, is obvious.
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days of American paleontology.Pub Date: May 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-247335-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.
Coulter’s treasured FBI agents take on two cases marked by danger and personal involvement.
Dillon Savitch and his wife, Lacey Sherlock, have special abilities that have served them well in law enforcement (Paradox, 2018, etc.). But that doesn't prevent Sherlock’s car from hitting a running man after having been struck by a speeding SUV that runs a red light. The runner, though clearly injured, continues on his way and disappears. Not so the SUV driver, a security engineer for the Bexholt Group, which has ties to government agencies. Sherlock’s own concussion causes memory loss so severe that she doesn’t recognize Savitch or remember their son, Sean. The whole incident seems more suspicious when a blood test from the splatter of the man Sherlock hit reveals that he’s Justice Cummings, an analyst for the CIA. The agency’s refusal to cooperate makes Savitch certain that Bexholt is involved in a deep-laid plot. Meanwhile, Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith is visiting friends who run a cafe in the touristy Virginia town of Gaffers Ridge. Hammersmith, who has psychic abilities, is taken aback when he hears in his mind a woman’s cry for help. Reporter Carson DeSilva, who came to the area to interview a Nobel Prize winner, also has psychic abilities, and she overhears the thoughts of Rafer Bodine, a young man who has apparently kidnapped and possibly murdered three teenage girls. Unluckily, she blurts out her thoughts, and she’s snatched and tied up in a cellar by Bodine. Bodine may be a killer, but he’s also the nephew of the sheriff and the son of the local bigwig. So the sheriff arrests Hammersmith and refuses to accept his FBI credentials. Bodine's mother has psychic powers strong enough to kill, but she meets her match in Hammersmith, DeSilva, Savitch, and Sherlock.
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9365-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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