Coonts’s action and the techno-talk are as gripping as ever.
The theft of a SuperAegis antiballistic-missile satellite launches this latest Jake Grafton technothriller from Coonts (Hong Kong, 2000, etc.).
The satellite, first of eight to be sent up as a worldwide shield against missiles, lifts off, swerves off-course, fails to fire its third-stage booster or destruct as ordered, and, with all tracking stations suddenly down, disappears. Then really bad stuff happens at a Connecticut sub base when Russian and German hirelings hijack the brand-new USS America, a stealth submarine of fabulous resources. (Rather improbably, the takeover takes place amid submachine gun fire inside the sub, endangering the hull as well as sending rounds ricocheting who knows where in a cramped space.) After dumping half the crew overboard and holding the rest as hostages, the hijackers try to comprehend just what they’ve hijacked. The America’s power lever is merely a computer joystick. The sub has no periscope, only a mast with light sensors that read photonic signals and a 25-gigabyte-per-second Revelation computer that processes a fantastic digital picture of the entire ocean about them: “The sea was as clear as glass. He could see hulls of other boats, buoys, the bottom of the sound, the shards of a sunken ship.” Black magic? No, but the hijackers find themselves deep into electronics that strain their resources. Meanwhile, chief investigator Marine Commandant Flap Le Beau uses Jake Grafton as his point man in trying to connect the sub hijacking with the satellite’s disappearance. Soon the America fires E-bombs that crunch nearly all electronic devices in a ten-mile radius, downing jetliners and leaving New York and Washington without power, while the Pentagon runs on emergency generators with only a few computers online. Hudson Security Services sends an assassin to do in Grafton, who learns that Zelda Hudson stole the sub to recover the satellite, which sank ten miles off Cape Barbas, so she could sell SuperAegis. But to whom?
Coonts’s action and the techno-talk are as gripping as ever.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-25341-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2001
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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