BETWEEN THE LINES...David Pitt

NOVEMBER - DECEMBER  REVIEWS

In NEXT (Harper pb 11/07), Michael Crichton explores the very controversial issue of marketing human genes for profit. An up-and-coming biotech company is being sued by a man who claims the company is underhandedly making big bucks off his genes. Meanwhile, a researcher discovers that a genetic experiment has produced world-altering results, if only he can keep himself alive enough to reveal them to the world. The book is a little more, shall we say, out there than Crichton’s recent work (one principal character could have walked in off the set of a “Planet of the Apes” sequel), but, as always, he keeps us completely engrossed and entertained.

Jack Henderson's CIRCUMFERENCE OF DARKNESS (Bantam pb 12/07) is so good, you'll have a hard time believing it's a first novel. The plot is terrific: a brilliant computer hacker, known as Phr33k, is abducted by terrorists who want him to help them bring down the U.S. The country’s only hope for survival: a beautiful 22-year-old prodigy, Jeannie Reese, who, after 9/11, designed the country’s new high-tech surveillance system. This is the sort of story Michael Crichton could knock out of the park, but Henderson doesn't need Crichton's help to hit a homer. An exciting, suspenseful, and frighteningly plausible near-future thriller.

WILD FIRE (Vision pb 11/07), by Nelson DeMille, is set in 2002, about a year after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. John Corey, the ex-NYPD detective who now works on a government anti-terrorism task force, must find a way to stop a fiendishly clever villain who's trying to orchestrate a nuclear attack on the U.S. The novel presents a what-if scenario that’s so plausible we have to remind ourselves that DeMille is making the whole thing up -- although, as usual, DeMille incorporates just enough fact into the story to make us feel just a bit creepy: could this happen? Could it happen today? Is it happening right now? Read the book, and shudder a little.

In LIMITATIONS (Harper Canadian pb 11/07) by Scott Turow, George Mason, an appeals court judge, is faced with the toughest decision of his career: whether to overturn, or uphold, the verdict in a controversial rape case. It's not the case that troubles Mason, so much as the memories it stirs: many years ago, when he was a student, Mason was a participant in a very similar situation. By deciding whether a few young men are rapists today, is he passing judgment on himself, all those years ago? Turow is in the top rank of lawyer-novelists (his debut, PRESUMED INNOCENT, is downright brilliant), and LIMITATIONS is not merely a legal thriller, but a rumination on the transient nature of right and wrong, of good and evil.

Also at the top of his field is Michael Palmer, who writes medical thrillers. THE FIFTH VIAL ( St. Martin 's pb 11/07) tells the stories of three strangers -- a med school student, a private detective, and a dying researcher -- who are, it turns out, linked by, of all things, a blood sample. Well, sort of -- this is a tricky, convoluted novel, and it's better to let Palmer tell you what's going on in it. Let's just say that the book (like Crichton's NEXT, as a matter of fact) will get you thinking about what doctors are doing, exactly, when they're nosing around your person, taking samples of this, bits of that. Palmer's strengths have always been his characters and his thoughtful stories, not cartoonish villainy and pointless chase scenes (if you want that stuff, try Robin Cook), and, even if it's not his best novel, THE FIFTH VIAL is awfully good.

HOLLYWOOD STATION (Vision pb 10/07) is a funny, fast-paced, irreverent cop novel by the master of funny, fast-paced, irreverent cop novels, Joseph Wambaugh. It follows the men and women of Hollywood Division, where an undercover operation has just gone belly up, a jewelry store was robbed, and something's fishy about a Russian-owned nightclub. The cast of oddball characters (Wambaugh's cops are usually oddballs) includes a single mother, a couple of surfer dudes, and a dreamer with stars in his eyes. This is a novel, and I mean this in the best way, that could have been written in the 1970s, when Wambaugh was turning out classics like THE CHOIRBOYS and THE NEW CENTURIANS, novels whose mixture of violence and humor made them entirely different from all other cop novels. Cops-turned-novelist are a dime a dozen; cops-turned-novelist as good as Wambaugh are exceedingly rare.

Iris Johansen, who started out writing historical suspense-romances, made the switch to crime fiction about a decade ago. From the get-go, with 1998's THE FACE OF DECEPTION, the Eve Duncan series has been consistently engaging. In STALEMATE (Bantam pb 12/07), Duncan, an accomplished forensic sculptor, is hired -- coerced, really -- by a Columbian arms dealer who needs her to identify a skull he believes belongs to his late wife. In return, the man offers to find out what happened to Eve's murdered daughter. Eve is skeptical of the whole deal, and she's usually got pretty good instincts, so it's no surprise the novel features plenty of twists and turns. It's also got some good, old fashioned emotion, too.

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