USAF Major General Richard ``Duke'' James, the high-flying hero of The Phalanx Dragon (1994) and other of Rizzi's technothrillers, does earthbound battle against savage North Koreans and a vicious home-front foe in this latest test of his considerable mettle. When Han Sinchon, the aging head of North Korea's Special Forces, gets word to the US (through Communist China) that he's prepared to launch a coup that could lead to the reuniting of his partitioned country, the White House details Duke to meet with him on Langau, a barren island in the Sea of Japan. Hedging its bets, however, Beijing informs Pyongyang about the American officer's mission, and Allan Manning, the US President's coke-snorting chief of staff (a closet homosexual who's being blackmailed by his estranged wife), is bent on sabotaging it to keep James from earning the National Security Advisor's post he covets for himself. Manning betrays Duke (and his country) to arms merchant Carl Hawkens whose Pakistani associate, Ghaith Bandar, is the go-between on deals that could upgrade the nuclear capabilities of Iran as well as North Korea and permit renegade Vietnamese to export biological weapons. When Duke reaches the rocky shores of Langau, then, the enemy is waiting for him. While the resourceful emissary strives to keep himself and his elderly contact alive, Washington mounts a massive rescue effort that soon pits an AWACS-directed squadron of F-15E Eagles against the Pyongyang military regime's Russian-made interceptors in a genuinely gripping series of aerial engagements. Duke lives to fight another day, albeit at no small cost in blood and high-tech equipment. Furious state-of-the-art action on land, at sea, and (especially) in the air, plus credibly malefic skullduggery behind the lines, will speed most readers past the holes in a plot charitably characterized as serviceable.
Pub Date: Sept. 6, 1996
ISBN: 1-55611-491-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1996
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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
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