Catnip for conspiracy theorists and fans of fast-paced thrillers.
Murder by jungle lion gets this CIA–laced story off to a rousing start.
In Paper’s (Perfect, 2010, etc.) debut novel, attorney Jeff Roberts reads a disturbing letter written by his father before his death. Soon Jeff believes that his phone is tapped and that he is being watched. Frightened, he decides to take a long vacation in Africa with girlfriend Nicole Landow, but their photographic safari ends when Jeff has a deadly encounter with a lion. After his death, which may have involved criminal activity, Jeff’s sister Kelly receives their dad’s unsettling letter. In his dispatch, Ted Roberts admits that when he was a White House CIA case officer in the 1960s, he played a part in John F. Kennedy’s assassination. The letter includes coded information to be directed to the JFK Assassination Records Review Board. Kelly, dumbfounded by her father’s confession, shares the letter with Senate staffer and Navy SEAL Jim Roth, Jeff’s best friend. Horrifying as its contents are, the letter itself is bad juju. Almost anyone reading it—Jim and Kelly included—soon encounters dangerous situations, and some who are shown the missive even end up dead. In fact, CIA Director Kay Brownstein suggests Kelly leave well enough alone to avoid taking “deadly risks” (but of course, she doesn’t listen). As conspiracy theories go, Paper, a Washington, D.C., attorney, offers an intriguing one that links top-level U.S. officials to the assassination. Dialogue and pacing are superb, and the chapter in which the safari tour company is sued in court is authoritatively well-written. But the use of italic type for large sections of text is daunting; italics are used for revealing past events, characters’ memories, and the contents of letters. Regarding the last, Kelly takes to writing to her dead father, which seems an inelegant way of providing exposition. It’s also almost comical that nearly every time someone sits on a chair or couch, it is made of leather. In addition, characters far too frequently nurse, swig, sip, or take long swallows of beer or wine.
Catnip for conspiracy theorists and fans of fast-paced thrillers.Pub Date: July 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-692-62147-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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