SUPERSTITION
By David Ambrose
Warner Books, $24
The author of the cult classic “The Man Who Turned Into Himself,” David Ambrose is back with one of the best thrillers of the year. The latest project of paranormal researcher Sam Towne is to bring together a group of volunteers to create a “tulpa.” Not exactly a ghost, a tulpa is a thought form created from the collective consciousness of the volunteers.
The group decides to create a tulpa named Adam, and give him as much history and background as they can imagine. Not much happens at first, but soon Adam begins to spell out words on a Ouija board, and the terror begins. It turns out that Adam wants to be real, and the only way that can happen is if the people who created him all die. Among them is Joanna Cross, a skeptical journalist who gets romantically involved with Towne.
While the explanation of how all this could occur is a little fuzzy, the consequences of creating Adam are pretty terrifying. In some wonderfully written scenes, Towne and Cross realize that Adam is taking away the lives of his creators, and the conclusion is a stunner. This one is highly recommended.
THE SIMPLE TRUTH
By David Baldacci
Warner Books, $25
Of all the authors that John Grisham has influenced, David Baldacci is probably the most interesting. His last book, “The Winner,” was as entertaining as a thriller gets, and while his new offering isn’t up to that one, it’s a mighty engaging yarn, at least until the end.
Rufus Harms is doing life in a military prison for the murder of a 10-year-old girl. Harms’ guilt seems irrefutable, until he receives a letter from the Army that brings the real facts of his terrible action back to his memory. Vowing to get released and revenge, he sends the U.S. Supreme Court an appeal that falls into the hands of Michael Fiske, a senior clerk at the
court who realizes that the people whom Harms names in his appeal as having forced him to kill the girl are some of the most powerful in the country. They are so powerful, in fact, that they begin sending killers after everyone who may have seen the appeal, and it is soon up to Michael’s brother, John, an ex-cop, and another court clerk, Sara Evans, to clear Harms’ name. While the romance between them is way too predictable, there is plenty of action, particularly in the first half of the book. Although the plot begins to shake and rattle later, this is still a well-told suspenser.
HAMMER OF EDEN
By Ken Follett
Crown, $25.95
Hippie terrorists threatening the destruction of California by causing an earthquake? I’m sure there have been stranger plots reviewed in this space, but none comes quickly to mind.
The bad guy in Ken Follett’s latest is Priest, the leader of a commune being evicted from its land by the big bad government, which wants to build a power plant on the site. Priest and his followers decide to take action, and they begin by stealing a seismic vibrator from a local oil-drilling company. Then Priest persuades one of his followers, the estranged wife of a well-known seismologist, to steal her hubby’s computer data, which shows all the good places to use their new machine to start The Big One on the San Andreas Fault.
Tracking these rascals down is Judy Maddox, a plucky FBI agent, and the seismologist, Michael Quercus. Not surprisingly, sparks fly (Or should we say the earth moves?) when these two meet and join forces to stop Priest and his goofy gang from leveling the state. As if the stakes could get any higher, Priest has Quercus’ little boy under his control and is more than willing to drop the poor kid down an open fault line if push comes to shove.
Most of Follett’s offerings have been imaginatively plotted nail-biters, which makes this latest all the more mysterious. It’s hard to take this group of hippie terrorists and their deranged scheme seriously, thus throwing a major crimp into the proceedings.
LINK
By Walt Becker
Morrow, $25
What if humanity’s missing link were an extraterrestrial? In his debut novel, Walt Becker takes this science-fiction premise and turns it into a very earthly portrayal of greed, lust and love in the jungle.
The first section of the book is a stunner. While on a dig in Mali, paleoanthropologist Samantha Colby finds a buried skeleton that is clearly not of this world. Better yet, the bones of its hand are gripping a strange scepter. Colby calls the one person who can help her make sense of the discovery, Jack Austin, a maverick colleague who is also her former fiance. As the two try to make sense of the skeleton, the Dogon natives who are helping on the dig begin to get territorial and demand that the scientists turn over the bones to them. This leads to the book’s most exciting passages, a late-night attack by the natives with machetes and the desperate flight of the scientists.
Barely escaping, they fly to the jungles outside Trinidad, where Austin believes he can find evidence of the use of the scepter amidst some ancient ruins. Here the plot begins to bog down, as the love story kicks into higher gear and Austin and Colby begin to worry about Ben Dorn, the South African arms dealer who is funding the whole trip.
While the book has several great sci-fi-type moments (as well as a solemn bibliography of about 30 books concerning the origin of the human species), it’s pulled down by too many spies and a fairly boring romance. Still, “Link” provides some refreshing twists on a popular premise, and Becker shows he is an author to watch.
OVER THE EDGE
By Hal Friedman
HarperCollins, $24
Hal Friedman’s latest opens with what must be every grade-school kid’s fantasy: seeing an unpopular teacher fall off the edge of a cliff during a field trip. The problem is, the teacher’s death may not have been an accident, and her replacement, feisty Meg Foley, wants to find out what happened. The small New Jersey suburb that Foley teaches in is tight-knit and doesn’t welcome outsiders, particularly those who ask uncomfortable questions. After receiving a few threats, Foley seeks help from L.A. Police Detective Dan Jarret, who was her father’s partner on the force before his death. Jarret, who is in hot water with his boss, welcomes the chance to fly out and give Foley a hand. What he finds are a clan of 8th graders who are budding psychos, a police chief who may be covering something up and a bank executive who may be resorting to murder to hide embezzlement of funds.
Jarret is a perplexing hero: In the book’s opening pages he beats a suspect to death on live TV. One might expect the author to subsequently explore the detective’s dark side, but that doesn’t happen. Instead he provides a series of increasingly violent incidents that eventually help place Foley in some major trouble.
While “Over the Edge” has the ingredients of a topnotch story, including some creepy portrayals of small-town attitudes, Friedman gives this tale a by-the-numbers treatment.
