A humbling, innovative sci-fi thriller (*****)

The naysayers will do their best to rip Lincoln Child's heart out for his rather erratic treatment of the hard science in his newest sci-fi thriller, "Deep Storm". And, it certainly has its weak or inaccurate moments! But the more important truth is that "Deep Storm" is a solidly gripping, wildly entertaining, credible science fiction thriller based on a truly imaginative and utterly horrifying premise.

Peter Crane, a naval physician, is summoned to a top secret naval operation housed on Storm King, a former commercial deep sea offshore oil platform located off the shore of Greenland. Crane's short term mission - to treat and discover the causes of what appears to be an escalating epidemic of illnesses among the staff - is exceptionally difficult. The myriad symptoms he encounters range from sweats, fever and loss of attention or focus to murderous florid psychotic episodes and refuse to lend themselves to diagnosis and understanding through any common vector.

From the moment of Crane's arrival on the rig, Admiral Spartan, the military commander of the operation and Howard Asher, the senior scientist on board, steadfastly refuse Crane access to certain highly classified areas or their staff. Unable to understand the reasons why Storm King's apparent mission - the excavation of Atlantis, buried for 10,000 years under a volcanic event in the North Atlantic - would be shrouded in such secrecy, he continues to probe into the areas on the rig that have been closed off to him. Ultimately (well, what else did you expect?), the truth is discovered and - trust me on this one - it is not only a truly innovative and speculative sci-fi premise but it is monumentally humbling at the same time!

Just as he did with his writing partner, Douglas Preston, in their jointly written novels, Lincoln has peppered "Deep Storm" throughout with interesting scholarly asides on a variety of topics that inform and entertain without detracting from or slowing down the plot - epidemiology and diagnostic research techniques; the perils of living in an extended submerged and confined environment; "impossible" mathematics; forensic data recovery from catastrophically destroyed hard drives; the physical structure of the earth's mantle; the conflict between science and its potential weaponization by a right-wing military; and more.

"Deep Storm" is truly a winner - non-stop hair-raising action, interesting and informative asides, wonderful character development, respectable dialogue, exactly the right amount of romance without being sappy, a goodly number of twists and turns and red-herrings and a cliff-hanger thought provoking ending that will just blow your mind! The science itself is the only weak link (just one glaring example - since electromagnetic energy propagates at the speed of light, it is impossible to detect it on its way. If you can detect the field ... too late, it's already there!) If Child takes the time to submit his next effort to a more thorough scientific edit, he'll be unbeatable! But, in the meantime, a high-speed page turning frenzy ain't too bad anyway!

Enjoy.

Paul Weiss

Thought-provoking and deeply moving (****)

One hundred and fifty years after the wars that destroyed an over-populated earth, mankind is now living on over one hundred colony worlds and a handful of giant roaming ships that once ferried men to the stars. Mia Havero is a young girl living on one of those ships whose residents are abundantly aware of the perils of the "lack of moral discipline" of "Free-Birthers" who embrace complete freedom of reproduction, an uncontrolled birth rate and the resulting exponential growth in population. They've adopted the harsh but entirely effective social policy of subjecting their young people to the "Trial". Every young person is dropped and summarily abandoned into a thirty day survive-or-die test in the harsh and cruel environment of a frequently hostile colony planet. Those who survive return to the fold of the ship and are called "adults". Those who don't - well, they just don't!

"Rite of Passage" is written from Mia's first person perspective as she grows through childhood, enters training for her time of Trial and is dropped onto the planet Tintera with her childhood friend, Jimmy Dentremont. At only 225 pages, "Rite of Passage" is a very short novel and for over 200 of those pages seems to be a rather typical coming of age story. It's reasonably well written with any number of heart-warming passages and some seriously thought-provoking essays and interludes on philosophy, education and ethics. In fact, the story concentrates so exclusively on Mia's education, evolution and the development of her character as she comes of age from self-centred girl child to mature young adult that any reader would be forgiven for forgetting that "Rite of Passage" won a Nebula Award as a science fiction novel!!

It's Panshin's epilogue that pulls "Rite of Passage" from mere novel into the realm of "classic", an eye-opening, jaw-dropping dissertation on the results of the irresponsible or reckless exercise of power. In a manner that will remind you of the subtle, quiet, yet compelling style of Simak's best novels, Panshin touches on issues of killing, prejudice, hatred, power and responsibility. When Panshin seamlessly returns our thoughts to the context of a science fiction novel by discussing the destruction of an entire planet, he brutally reminds us that these issues are timeless and are likely to remain with humanity forever unless we make a conscious decision to grow beyond cruelty.

"Rite of Passage" is a deeply moving novel likely to remain in your thoughts long after the final page is turned!

Paul Weiss

Outdoes "The Da Vinci Code" hands down (*****)

Harvard symbologist and religious historian, Robert Langdon, is intrigued and somewhat puzzled to find himself peremptorily summoned to CERN, the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, world's foremost research establishment in ultra high energy particle physics, to assist with a secret internal investigation of the murder of one of their staff. Leonardo Vetra - a brilliant senior physicist, a still-practicing Roman Catholic priest, and the discoverer of a method of creating and safely containing anti-matter - has been found brutally murdered with the word "Illuminati" branded on his chest.

The near light-speed, explosive pace at which Brown would have us believe the plot of "Angels and Demons" could unroll requires what, for some, will be an insurmountable suspension of credibility. But, if you can find your way over that niggling barrier, you're in for some non-stop, rollicking entertainment.

Langdon and Vittoria Vetra, the victim's beautiful daughter and similarly gifted physicist, follow the clues into the heart of the Vatican, host of an enclave of the world's cardinals convened to elect the replacement of the recently deceased pope where they must confront the current incarnation of The Illuminati, a centuries old secret brotherhood of scientists dating from the time of Galileo and the Italian Renaissance. The Illuminati carries out a high profile symbolic execution of the preferiti, the four cardinals most expected to win the papal election, and plans to use a small sample of Vetra's anti-matter to reduce Vatican City to a pile of rubble as a final close to the interminable battle between cutting edge science and Roman Catholic dogma.

Reading "Angels and Demons", I find it impossible to criticize Brown's character building skills as an author because, frankly, he didn't even try. "Angels and Demons" is plot, plot and yet more plot! But my money says it succeeds wildly and is a novel that is not only spectacularly entertaining but should avoid the visceral polarization of its readership that "The Da Vinci Code" managed to produce. I might go even further. Despite reading from the point of view of a non-practicing and disenchanted Roman Catholic, educated and believing profoundly in the value of scientific research and technology, I would nevertheless suggest that "Angels and Demons" presents a credible, balanced FICTIONAL story of a climactic confrontation between these two long-time arch-enemies. Ah, heck ... if anything, the scientists come out on the cruddy end of the stick and look more the bad guy than the church! That's OK - that provides a rather nice foil to the outlook one gets from a reading of "The Da Vinci Code"!

Enjoy!

Five stars and unconditionally recommended as a first-rate thriller!

Paul Weiss

Chalk up another winner for Patterson (****)

In "4th of July", the fourth installment of Patterson's Women's Murder Club, SFPD homicide detective Lindsay Boxer finds herself on trial for her professional life. A pull-over after a wild car chase goes entirely sour and results in Lindsay killing a female minor and seriously wounding a male minor condemning him to life as a wheelchair-confined machine-assisted quadriplegic. Boxer finds herself staring down the barrel of a lawsuit for "wrongful death, excessive use of force, and professional misconduct" filed by the parents with a potential price tag of $100 million in damages.

While Boxer's attorney, Yuki Castellano, the newest initiate to the Women's Murder Club, is outwardly poised and confident that she can clear her client, the trial's outcome is far from certain and Patterson has treated us to some truly electric courtroom drama!

Plot number two - on administrative leave to deal with the trial, Boxer has sought seclusion in the quaint town of Half Moon Bay. But the peaceful quiet of her chosen cloister is shattered as the town's residents are menaced by a series of brutal murders. Boxer twigs to an uncanny resemblance to an unsolved John Doe murder from very early in the rookie stages of her career and she reaches the decision to involve herself in the investigation. From that point, Patterson takes Boxer, the local police force, Half Moon Bay's local population and his unsuspecting readers careening down a taut, tension-filled road that's chock-a-block full of twists and turns and slams us all into a climax that nobody but nobody will see coming.

While the two plots are very loosely connected only through the literary device of Boxer's administrative leave, they are cleverly juxtaposed and the two stories become nicely crafted into a seamless whole. Story #2 is a typically well-done thriller that easily succeeds in fulfilling any expectations Patterson fans will have as a result of his long list of past best-sellers but I think Story #1 is the more interesting of the two.

Not your typical thriller brain candy, Patterson raises some serious hot-button issues related to minors and violent crime that won't leave a single reader sitting on the sidelines. As I read, there was more than one occasion on which my own opinions on the issues surfaced and I found myself getting quite warm under the collar. Well done, Patterson!

While I look forward to the next two Women's Murder Club novels, "The 5th Horseman" and "The 6th Target", it is my critical hope that Patterson will return to the original style of "1st to Die" and let the entire club figure more prominently in the novels and the solution to their plots. "4th of July" was clearly a Lindsay Boxer novel with the other members of her "club" being granted no more than token cameo walk-ons. Think of Baldacci's writing a "Camel Club" novel in which Oliver Stone battles the bad guys all by himself and ignores Caleb, Milton and Reuben! Well, it just isn't the same thing, is it? That said, "4th of July" worked well and comes recommended from this reader. Enjoy!

Paul Weiss

Grandma Mazur almost steals the show (****)

Stephanie Plum is slowly learning the bounty hunter trade but she's got a long road to haul before she'll be ready to tackle the really mean dudes.

In the meantime, "Two for the Dough" opens with Stephanie looking to collar Kenny Mancuso, a bail jumper who's almost a family member, black sheep cousin to her erstwhile policeman boyfriend, Joe Morelli. When Mancuso's trail leads to Spiro Stiva's funeral parlour, Stephanie is surprised to learn that Stiva wants to hire her for his own case - finding 24 bargain basement caskets that have gone missing from a rental garage lock-up! When Stephanie discovers notes from Mancuso threatening her unless she starts to mind her own business and Stiva also wants to hire her as a $100 a day bodyguard to protect him from Mancuso as well, she knows the case runs much deeper than she first imagined.

For those that have read Stephanie Plum's debut in "One for the Money", it will come as no surprise to learn that the mystery is pretty thin gruel and the ultimate solution is easily plumbed (ouch!) by any attentive reader. The mystery, of course, is only the context in which Evanovich loving portrays the comedic antics of Stephanie Plum and Grandma Mazur, the frankly hilarious ethnic stereotypes of New York Italian family relationships, the off-the-wall one liners of Stephanie's long-suffering father, and the stumbling but burgeoning romantic relationship between Plum and Morelli.

Enjoyable lightweight reading easily dashed off in an afternoon on the beach! The thing that will probably slow you down is re-reading passages aloud to the people around you so you can explain what was making you laugh!

Paul Weiss

Some pretty "heavy" ideas here! (****)

In "Mission of Gravity", Hal Clement created Mesklin, a very odd planet indeed - so massive, so oblate and spinning so rapidly that its gravity varies from 3g at its equator to 700g at its poles! Its day is little more than 20 of our minutes long and its temperature is so low that it has liquid methane oceans. Its high eccentricity orbit causes seasons of grotesquely uneven length. Charles Lackland and his team of human space faring scientists can manage at the equator with mechanically assisted survival suits but existence under 700g at the poles is simply beyond human engineering capabilities. Recovery of a rocket with all of its instrumentation landed at one of the poles is a problem that seems insurmountable until our intrepid explorers stumble into a serendipitous encounter with Barlennan, a rather audacious native traveling merchant. Barlennan's species, best described as 15 inch caterpillars with outrageously strong pincers, has evolved under the extreme conditions at Mesklin's pole. Being on an exploratory mission themselves in Mesklin's equatorial region, they admit to feeling somewhat giddy and "light"-headed under what they describe as virtually non-existent gravity in comparison to what they are used to on their home turf!

Clement has created a delightfully simple plot that revolves around the hard science of his hypothetical planet. Lackland enlists Barlennan's aid in recovering the stranded hardware in exchange for information such as maps and weather forecasts. Along the route to the pole, Clement proposes physical problems and raises questions - What might the weather of such a planet be? How does a reconnaissance satellite achieve a low altitude geosynchronous orbit of a planet that is spinning at such an enormous speed? How might its natives appear having evolved under such dramatically different conditions? How might their psychological outlook on this world be different as a result of those physical conditions? How might engineering problems, simple on earth, be made astonishingly difficult on Mesklin and what modified approaches would be used in their solution? What surprising effects are caused by the universality of physical rules that apply regardless of the local gravity?

It should come as no surprise to a reader to learn that Clement was also a skilled high school science teacher. The development of the science in his story is lean, lucid and clear to a fault. Clement lets the plot and his characters naturally encounter the problems, puzzle through their difficulties and propose and create clear logical solutions which seem to clarify the science. Clement never bores the reader with dull narrative explanations, never over-explains and shows rather than tells.

Sadly, at less than 200 pages, "Mission of Gravity" suffers by its very brevity. Mesklin is such a vast, unique and dramatic concept that Clement barely scratched its surface. I found myself wanting much, much more science and a greater depth in the development of potential avenues to explore. The soft science was effectively ignored. For example, Barlennan's attitudes and reactions were anthropomorphized to the extent of being cartoonish (C'mon, Hal ... let your aliens be alien!). Barlennan's mastery of English came conveniently easily but communication with other races on the planet was abandoned as an unsolved problem.

"Mission of Gravity", while not a frenetic page-turner, is an enjoyable story that ends on a mild plot twist and a universally warm, optimistic note. It has earned the moniker "classic" and I certainly look forward to the sequel "Starlight". Perhaps the broadened scientific horizons that I hope for will appear there!

Paul Weiss

Great science, scary scenario, weak thriller ! (***)

Daniel Kalla's "Pandemic" is an entertaining, informative and frightening thriller that undoubtedly ought to be taken seriously as an uncomfortably plausible scenario in real-life. But, as a fictional thriller, frankly, it simply isn't innovative enough to make the cut as a first-rate thriller. Good quality, yes, but not with that dynamite rock-em, sock-em, non-stop page-flipping urgency that separates the men from the boys in the thriller section of the library!

The villain of the piece is the ARCS virus (Acute Respiratory Collapse Syndrome), a disease with the lethal virulence of small pox or Spanish Flu but a contagion that spreads with the speed and ease of the common cold! The one (and I would suggest only) truly innovative twist in the novel is in the opening chapter. Kalla posits an ultra-right wing fundamentalist group of Islamic terrorists that purposely infect themselves, in effect weaponizing the virus and using themselves as carriers! Biological suicide bombers, as it were! The notion of using a dastardly right-wing fundamentalist Islamic jihad confronting a right-wing militarist US government whose simplest solution might be to carpet bomb the Middle East and turn the burning sands into a glassy parking lot is getting to be a decidedly tired plot device.


But - make no mistake - Kalla is a skilled writer who has a marked ability to convey the science behind his plot in an informative, interesting fashion. And the logistical details of the World Health Organization and Atlanta's Centre for Disease Control's rapid and overwhelming response to the release of such a viral pathogen are quite breath-taking and humbling. Hats off to these organizations and kudos to Kalla's ability to tell us their story.


Four stars for the science and the real-world details of the response to a frightening pandemic scenario. Two stars for the thriller. We'll average it out at three stars and call it a story worth taking the time to read!

JOHN COREY ... what a piece of work (***)!

Take Michael Connelly's Detective Harry Bosch, a hard-boiled, talented, nearly burnt-out loner with lots of psychological baggage and absolutely no respect for superiors or procedure. Add the self-deprecating faux stumble-bum approach of Peter Falk's Columbo and toss in a heaping helping of smart-aleck motor mouth Rodney Dangerfield complete inability to control the flow of virulent sarcasm and wisecracks! Sounds a little much, doesn't it? But he's our hero for Nelson DeMille's "Plum Island".

John Corey, NYPD homicide detective, is on medical leave recovering from bullet wounds when his friend, chief of the Southold Police Department, enlists his aid looking into the double homicide of Tom and Judy Gordon, also friends of Corey, and employees of Plum Island, the nearby high-level bio-containment facility studying deadly animal diseases such as anthrax and simian Ebola. First terrifying appearances were that some sort of biological terrorist threat had gone sour but the old rule of "follow the money" lead to a somewhat more tolerable line of investigation. It seemed the Gordons had stolen a vaccine with the motive of peddling it to the pharmaceutical world for billions. But Corey's in-your-face persistence was uncovering clues and details that just didn't seem to mesh with that story. Simple drug-running was a possibility but even that didn't quite click. Eventually, Corey uncovers an amazingly entertaining story of greed, money, murder, mayhem and political skullduggery spanning three hundred years of history and ranging geographically from New York, to the Caribbean, to England and back again.

In a style that reminded me of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's incurable penchant for technical sidebars, DeMille has tossed off a bewildering variety of essays that entertained, informed and, at the same time, moved the story forward. The staged lecture tour of Plum Island's hazardous facility, hosted first by Security Chief Paul Stevens and followed by the facility's director Dr Zollner was worth the reading of the book all by itself. But you'll also be treated to snippets of detail on coastal marine navigation, a cornucopia of procedural information on the necessary foundation police work to solving a homicide and (are you ready for this?) a rather extensive history of Captain Kidd and his 17th century privateering exploits that ultimately ended in his execution in England!

Lots of promise to be sure and there's certainly no doubt about DeMille's skill as a writer! But, just as a little bit of someone like John Corey would go a long, long way in real life, his constant cracking wise left me cold on the printed page as well! If DeMille had seen his way to lopping 100 pages off the final draft, it would have been just right and I would have ended the story not only entertained by the police procedural but laughing at Corey's antics in the bargain. Just three stars but recommended as a quick and entertaining piece of brain candy anyway! Enjoy!