Julie Blake, the author's pugnacious heroine (Cyberkiss, 1996, etc.), and her lover Vic Paoli, partners in Data 9000, their struggling computer investigations firm, are thrilled with a job offer from NASA. It comes from picture-perfect Margo Miller, in charge of p.r. at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, who had been a college buddy of Vic's. Someone is hacking into NASA's computers, shutting down software programs and threatening a delay in the next shuttle mission, only weeks away. Arriving at the Center, Julie and Vic meet icy Lisa Foster, the interim Director, who gives them a week to find the hacker. Meanwhile, the team of astronauts in residence for the upcoming shuttle mission, headed by John Garza, seems to be having a lot more than computer contamination problems, such as the apparent suicide of team member Gary Olander, followed by the drowning death—definitely murder—of Garza. There are rumors of alien sightings; reports of unauthorized biological experiments in space; a spy planted in the Center by a rabid group of anti-space activists; and rumblings of politically motivated funding cuts. With all of this, not to mention Julie's jealous dislike of Margo and the totally superfluous presence of Max, Julie's best woman friend, Vic and Julie still manage to uncover a nasty conspiracy. Defying belief is an old game with Chapman, but this outing should come with a warning label: Computer ignoramuses, stay away! Welcome space groupies only!
Pub Date: May 17, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-15542-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1997
All these problems are handsomely solved at the unsurprising cost of making the human characters less interesting than the...
Just when you thought you’d seen a detective in every guise imaginable, here comes one in sheep’s clothing.
For years, George Glenn hasn’t been close to anyone but his sheep. Everyday he lets them out, pastures them, reads to them and brings them safely back home to his barn in the guilelessly named Irish village of Glennkill. Now George lies dead, pinned to the ground by a spade. Although his flock haven’t had much experience with this sort of thing, they’re determined to bring his killer to justice. There are of course several obstacles, and debut novelist Swann deals with them in appealingly matter-of-fact terms. Sheep can’t talk to people; they can only listen in on conversations between George’s widow Kate and Bible-basher Beth Jameson. Not even the smartest of them, Othello, Miss Maple (!) and Mopple the Whale, can understand much of what the neighborhood priest is talking about, except that his name is evidently God. They’re afraid to confront suspects like butcher Abraham Rackham and Gabriel O’Rourke, the Gaelic-speaking charmer who’s raising a flock for slaughter. And even after a series of providential discoveries and brainwaves reveals the answer to the riddle, they don’t know how to tell the Glennkill citizenry.
All these problems are handsomely solved at the unsurprising cost of making the human characters less interesting than the sheep. But the sustained tone of straight-faced wonderment is magical.Pub Date: June 5, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-385-52111-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Flying Dolphin/Doubleday
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Short chapters, paragraphs, and sentences; stilted dialogue; facile plotting; a few feeble passes at description: a...
Schematic and pedestrian, Patterson’s latest (after The Beach House, p. 519) pits Alex Cross against a trio of serial killers.
If only Alex Cross (last seen in Violets Are Blue, 200l) could retire from the Washington Police Force, as he wants to when he first appears here, having breakfast with his family. Alas, Cross’s friend John Sampson entreats the detective to take one more case, and a desultory pursuit ensues. Sampson believes the conviction of his friend, ’Nam vet Ellis Cooper, for the brutal murder of three women resulted from a frame-up. Patterson’s quick (what else?) crosscut to the killers bears Sampson out. Calling themselves “the three blind mice,” the men are hired killers unaware of the identity and motives of their employer, who, presumably, is the fourth mouse of the title. With “the clock for Ellis Cooper . . . ticking so loud,” Cross and Sampson search in vain for evidence to clear him before he is executed. The Army’s indifference to evidence that clears Cooper and points to other suspects bluntly suggests a cover-up. Then, crimes similar to the ones Copper allegedly committed follow: the three killers slaughter their victims, paint them red, and leave a straw doll at the scene of the carnage. E-mails from someone called “Foot Soldier” lead Cross to the solution, which, as Patterson makes obvious, stems from atrocities the military committed in Vietnam. Some feel-good domestic scenes (Cross’s grandma survives heart surgery) and a few hackneyed romantic interludes for Cross and Sampson break up the chase. At the closeout, the killers dispatched, Cross is planning to go to work for the FBI, suggesting a new tack for the series.
Short chapters, paragraphs, and sentences; stilted dialogue; facile plotting; a few feeble passes at description: a Patterson blue-plate special.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2002
ISBN: 0-316-69300-6
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2002
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