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THE THIRD PANDEMIC

A plague novel, chockablock with microbiological weirdness and humans who behave at times with about as much conscience as microbes: a story as absorbingly ambitious as Ouellette's debut fiction (The Deus Machine, 1994). Uni, a worldwide conglomerate of companies, is largely a relay system of computers, a global megabeast. Its main cytoputer, based in part on human cytoplasm (a far more reliable conductor of electrons than the finest wire), is more powerful than any other computer system on the planet. At Uni's Virtual Surgery Center, Dr. Elaine Wilkes discovers that Agent 57a, a theoretical bacillus she has extrapolated from molecular descriptions of Chlamydia psittaci, has a very good chance of coming into being within the next ten years and halving the world population—though the cytoputer's gigantic capabilities might devise an antidote within the next two years. Uni decides to keep the upcoming outbreak a secret, stockpile vast reserves of the antidote, and make a superfortune when the bug hits. Little does Uni know that the plague, incubated in and carried by parrots, pigeons, and other birds, is already afoot in Third World countries and spreading swiftly. Elaine, dismayed, steals the cytoputer's plague disks and plans to get copies to world health organizations. Uni, however, sends its bad guys after her, and she's arrested in Seattle. There, she falls in with Lt. Philip Paris, a detective obsessed with finding a nutcase who has been spreading E. coli in Seattle restaurants and has put Paris's wife into a permanent coma. Paris springs Elaine and hides her on his boat in Puget Sound. While pursuits and showdowns hold the reader in a vise grip, as do descriptions of American cities in bacterial meltdown, the novel's most awesome power comes from Ouellette's smiling descriptions of colonies of Chlamydis psittaci on the move, pages potent enough to shock any reader into a severe health regimen. Very scary, a fabulously grisly amusement not to be read in bed. (Author tour)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-671-52534-4

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Pocket

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1996

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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

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MAGIC HOUR

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.

Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

Pub Date: March 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-345-46752-3

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005

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