Fans savvy enough to ignore the ill-advised extras and keep their eyes on the duel between Rhyme and Unsub 40 will be...
The latest of Lincoln Rhyme’s fiendishly inventive antagonists is a killer who rails against rampant consumerism online, then hacks into the Internet of Things to murder New Yorkers who’ve grown too attached to their computer-driven toys.
Following a spotting of the perp dubbed Unsub 40 in a crowded shopping center, the NYPD’s Amelia Sachs is at the point of apprehending him when a calamitous escalator accident claims her attention and bystander Greg Frommer’s life. Unsub 40 escapes to plot further sabotage of the microchips that regulate the behavior of common household and industrial devices that might otherwise turn nightmarishly lethal—though he’d be even happier with the kind of hands-on violence that allowed him to swing a ball-peen hammer or wield a razor-sharp saw. Amelia directs Frommer’s destitute widow, Sandy, to attorney Evers Whitmore and quadriplegic criminalist Lincoln Rhyme (The Skin Collector, 2014, etc.), who’s now left criminal investigation to teach forensics and concentrate on civil cases, for their help in preparing a liability lawsuit against—well, against anyone they can find with plausible liability and substantial assets. For a while, it looks as if Amelia and Rhyme, her sometime lover, will be competing for expert help and resources. But their two cases predictably join together, freeing them to focus together on what they do best: turning over every clod of dirt in the Big Apple in search of Unsub 40, who continues, through a combination of cunning and uncanny good luck, to elude them. Deaver, evidently worried that he hasn’t provided a generous enough banquet of felonies, interleaves a couple of complementary cases for Rhyme and Amelia’s associates, but these are both subpar and distracting, though they do allow another of his patented multistage, 60-page denouements, though this time with gradually diminishing returns.
Fans savvy enough to ignore the ill-advised extras and keep their eyes on the duel between Rhyme and Unsub 40 will be treated to all the usual thrills, which are worth every breathless minute.Pub Date: March 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4555-3634-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days...
In 1876, professor Edward Cope takes a group of students to the unforgiving American West to hunt for dinosaur fossils, and they make a tremendous discovery.
William Jason Tertullius Johnson, son of a shipbuilder and beneficiary of his father’s largess, isn’t doing very well at Yale when he makes a bet with his archrival (because every young man has one): accompany “the bone professor” Othniel Marsh to the West to dig for dinosaur fossils or pony up $1,000, but Marsh will only let Johnson join if he has a skill they can use. They need a photographer, so Johnson throws himself into the grueling task of learning photography, eventually becoming proficient. When Marsh and the team leave without him, he hitches a ride with another celebrated paleontologist, Marsh’s bitter rival, Edward Cope. Despite warnings about Indian activity, into the Judith badlands they go. It’s a harrowing trip: they weather everything from stampeding buffalo to back-breaking work, but it proves to be worth it after they discover the teeth of what looks to be a giant dinosaur, and it could be the discovery of the century if they can only get them back home safely. When the team gets separated while transporting the bones, Johnson finds himself in Deadwood and must find a way to get the bones home—and stay alive doing it. The manuscript for this novel was discovered in Crichton’s (Pirate Latitudes, 2009, etc.) archives by his wife, Sherri, and predates Jurassic Park (1990), but if readers are looking for the same experience, they may be disappointed: it’s strictly formulaic stuff. Famous folk like the Earp brothers make appearances, and Cope and Marsh, and the feud between them, were very real, although Johnson is the author’s own creation. Crichton takes a sympathetic view of American Indians and their plight, and his appreciation of the American West, and its harsh beauty, is obvious.
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days of American paleontology.Pub Date: May 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-247335-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
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