Like a ragged old ghost, 007 returns for his annual haunt in this seventh Gardner/ Bond incarnation; but this time—unlike in last year's tepid No Deals, Mr. Bond—the spook shows some spunk as he tackles Gardner's niftiest villain to date. Bond's nemesis here is Vladimir Scorpius, ex-kingpin of outlaw arms-dealers, now known—after plastic surgery—as Father Valentine, guru to the The Meek Ones, a Moonie-like sect. No ordinary villain, Scorpius "was all that had ever been cruel, uncaring, revolting and unjust through history, from Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun to Himmler and Klaus Barbie." This welcome throwback to the moral gigantism of Ian Fleming's Bond tales first comes to 007's notice when a Meek One turns up drowned in the Thames, and Bond's number is in her phone book. Called back from an SAS fitness course, Bond pursues a crooked trail that leads to: offices of a high-tech credit card that allows Meek Ones to manipulate world bank accounts; the bedside of a drugged, noble-blooded Meek One; partnership with a sexy IRS agent on Scorpius' trail, and with an SAS man whose daughter has embraced Meek-dom; assorted bodies. Stalwarts Qu'te (female successor to Fleming's Q), M, Miss Moneypenny, and housekeeper May make proper appearances; but this busyness is only prelude to the unveiling of Scorpius' master plant—to dispatch (at a hefty price, for unnamed clients) his Meek Ones as human bombs to blow up world leaders—and to Bond's showdown with the fiend at his North Carolina compound. There, echoing old Fleming books, Bond combats insects and snakes (Dr. No), marries the IRS agent only to have her die (On her Majesty's Secret Service), and at last kills Scorpius in a display of 007-sadism unequalled since Scan Connery was lean and young. A swift climax sees Bond racing to nab a traitor in his ranks, and to stop a last Meek One from blowing up the P.M. and the US President. As in Gardner's others, there's little here of the gadgetry, sex, and humor that made Fleming's tales such fun; but this unusually grim Bond morality play offers plenty of fast comic-book action, some vivid characters, and enough references to the 007 canon to please most Bondphiles.
Pub Date: May 23, 1988
ISBN: 1605983845
Page Count: -
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1988
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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