A fair thriller but an excellent satire of American media.
Crimmins’ debut thriller follows two men who survive a hostage crisis and later endure unremitting media attention as they attempt to capture a terrorist.
When recent Georgetown University graduate Tom O’Malley fills in for his boss to deliver pizza one night, it proves a fateful decision. He happens upon a group of Uzi-toting Muslim terrorists, led by a man named André Abdul, who have taken several State Department employees captive—and they add Tom to the hostage tally. He makes it out alive, but authorities remain concerned that Abdul, who escaped police, may still be in the United States. So Tom and a fellow survivor, Chilean translator Amado Salpedro, go on a publicity tour, hoping that the public’s sustained interest will help ensnare the terrorist leader. The novel becomes invested in the aftermath of Tom and Amado’s captivity, and follows them as they make the rounds on talk shows. The novel makes its boldest statements in its depictions of the media; for example, Tom and Amado begin an interview by responding to questions about their traumatic experience and end up, in a woeful but comical scene, sitting through a tacky song and music video loosely based on the incident. Tom’s back story pales in comparison to Amado’s; the Chilean immigrant, unable to find success in America, has grown to resent privileged people like Tom. Even Abdul, whose family’s estate was destroyed in Beirut, comes across as a more riveting character than Tom does. That said, Tom’s solid relationship with his girlfriend, Amy, gives him a semblance of maturity, although it’s often offset by his irresponsibility and naïveté. His conversations include stories of partying with his rugby team; at one point, he has to have the term “chop shop” explained to him, and, at another, guesses at Los Angeles’ nickname (“I think they call it L.A.”). The novel also doesn’t provide very much suspense—readers are told the exact date of another terrorist plot in the works—but the bad guys are appropriately and convincingly menacing when they finally show up.
A fair thriller but an excellent satire of American media.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-1490307435
Page Count: 350
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
