Lots of very entertaining and very weird science within a workable thriller plot.
An American epidemiologist quite literally drops into the frozen Canadian north to find out what has caused several scientists to die spectacularly gruesome deaths.
First novelist and Soho Press cofounder Jurjevics weaves his great fondness for the fragile, seductive, polar environment with carefully researched viral lore in a largely successful thriller about bioterror and the pathologists who keep us safe in our beds. Offshore-educated M.D. Jessica Hanley, famous for her intuitive epidemiological solutions, draws the short stick when the call comes from the Trudeau Research Center, which houses a collection of scientists way up at the top of Canada. Three of their number, who had exited the relative comfort of the center’s ecologically sensitive igloos-of-the-future to collect data out near one of the permanent openings in the ice cap, died horrible, sudden and mysterious deaths, and the fourth in their group went off by himself immediately afterwards, stripped stark naked and frozen in a flash. The remaining researchers, understandably spooked, and the Canadian powers-that-be, need someone imported quickly to sort it all out. Hanley has the skills, but she will have to abandon her needy, woefully dyslexic son to the prim management of his self-righteous but always-there dad. Parachuted in at the last possible moment before the Center becomes unreachable in the months-long arctic night, Hanley deputizes a couple of assistants and starts sorting through every last personal belonging of the departed, looking for what must either be a very vicious bacterium, or a virus. What she doesn’t know is that the submariners who tried to evacuate an unpopular Russian scientist around the time of the disaster fell victim to the same plague. Counseling son Joey by satellite, wrestling with major disruptions in her circadian rhythms and succumbing to the manly charms of an unattached Inuit on the crew, Hanley is one busy epidemiologist. But a good one. She has the culprit identified just as some very dashing Russians return to clean up the mess left by their dead colleague.
Lots of very entertaining and very weird science within a workable thriller plot.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-670-03437-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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