THE DEVIL’S WORKSHOP
By Stephen J. Cannell
Morrow, $25
With its snappy pace and broad but vivid characters, “The Devil’s Workshop” reads like a novel that’s waiting to be turned into a TV movie. That’s no surprise, given that author Stephen J. Cannell is not only a prolific suspense writer but also has created such well-known TV series as “The A-Team” and “The Rockford Files.”
Cannell’s latest yarn gives us Stacy Richardson, a graduate student in microbiology at the University of Southern California, who learns that her husband, head of the school’s microbiology department, has committed suicide while on a sabbatical at a top-secret government bioweapons plant at Ft. Detrick, Md. Not believing her husband has killed himself, Richardson races off to the plant to retrieve her husband’s body but finds that it has been cremated. Attempts by the base commander, the diabolical Adm. James G. Zoll, to convince Richardson that her husband had been depressed and acting erratically only serve to convince her that something very bad is happening at Ft. Detrick, the “Devil’s Workshop” of the title.
Richardson’s husband had been working on a group of killer proteins known as Prions, which are suspected to be the cause of mad cow disease. If the military could harness Prions to attack people with a particular genetic makeup, Richardson realizes, it would have an astonishingly lethal weapon. With the help of a couple of hobos, an ultra-slick and very funny Hollywood producer and a brokenhearted ex-Marine, Richardson sets out to expose Zoll and clear her husband’s name.
Killer microorganisms have been done to death in the last few years, but give Cannell credit for taking this overdone material and turning it into a brisk albeit cartoonish tale.
THE INSIDER
By Stephen Frey
Ballantine, $24.95
Many financial thrillers overwhelm readers with minutiae that only a rabid Wall Street observer could follow. Not so those written by Stephen Frey, whose earlier “The Takeover” and “The Vulture Fund” showed a talent for depicting financial and human interactions.
The main character here is Jay West, a slightly naive young man who has been hired at a high-powered investment firm. His mentor is the ruthless Oliver Mason, dealmaker extraordinaire who lures his new hire with promises of a million-dollar bonus at the end of the year. But it won’t take readers long to figure out that West is more likely to end up behind bars before the year is out.
Mason has cut a deal with the feds to use West as a sacrificial lamb to avoid going to jail himself for insider trading. After one co-worker is brutally murdered and another steals a computer disk from his apartment, West realizes that something is very wrong. The thoroughly repugnant Mason slips the noose around West’s neck with great skill, and readers should have a nerve-wracking good time watching him slip out.
ICE STATION
By Matthew J. Reilly
Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, $24.95
It takes a really good action thriller to shove its way into this space, but “Ice Station,” by Australian writer Matthew J. Reilly, made it with ease. Comparisons to other adventure books are difficult, but imagine the main character from “The Road Warrior” being plopped down in Antarctica and you may get the idea.
The book’s premise is simple: At a remote station, a group of American researchers has found
what appears to be a spaceship buried in the coastal ice shelf. When a team of divers goes under the shelf to investigate, they are torn limb from limb. The remaining scientists send a distress signal that is picked up by the U.S., France and Britain. An elite Marine squad, headed by Lt. Shane Schofield, arrives to find the researchers being aided by French scientists from a nearby base. But the Frenchmen are really part of a military force that plans to kill Schofield, his men and the American scientists and steal the spaceship.
What follows are some of the wildest and most sustained battles in an action thriller in a long time. The initial fight takes nearly 60 pages, and while the Americans are battling the French, they also have to cope with killer whales and a strange, seal-like creature that seems to be hanging around the spaceship. There are more battles–most notably with a tough British military team–and “Ice Station” should appeal to readers who want a brew of non-stop action, lots of explosions and a little bit of conspiracy.
DEEP BACKGROUND
By David Corn
Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, $25.95
Assassination, conspiracy and some nasty Beltway politics are the cornerstones of this dark, impressive political thriller by David Corn, the Washington editor of The Nation magazine. The story concerns the fallout that occurs after President Bob Hanover is killed by a lone, unidentified gunman at a White House press conference. The assassination puts Hanover’s close personal aide, Nick Addis, between the vice president and the president’s widow, both of whom are angling for the presidential nomination at an upcoming convention.
To take his mind off the two schemers, Addis decides to check out some rumors about a weird land deal that took place when Hanover was governor of Louisiana. In the meantime, a CIA internal watchdog, Julia Lancette, finds a tentative link between Hanover’s death and a shadowy unit of CIA assassins. The investigations of Lancette and Addis eventually hook them up with Clarence Dunne, the now-disgraced chief of White House security who is trying to learn the identity of the killer.
Corn has a talent for conveying the unsettled and ambiguous world of high-level politics. References to figures like JFK and Bill Clinton give this labyrinthine tale an eerie touch. It’s like reading a story about characters who exist in a parallel dimension that is only ever-so-slightly different from our own. This is a top-notch piece of fiction, thoughtful and compelling.
CRADLE AND ALL
By Zachary Alan Fox
Kensington, $23.95
Sometimes when thrillers start out at a high pitch, it becomes difficult to sustain the note, and that’s exactly what happens in this tale of a good woman being hounded by a psycho.
Kate McDonald is a social worker, mother of an adorable baby named Alex, and married to an up-and-coming deputy district attorney. So what’s the problem? It starts one day when a message scrolls across her computer screen at work: “Your baby is going to die.” It happens so quickly that Kate is not even sure it was real, but things get worse.
Soon every aspect of Kate’s life is upended, and when she tells others, they question her sanity. Of course, readers know better even as Kate is abandoned by her husband and co-workers. Author Zachary Alan Fox had a good idea, but he turns up the heat so high and for so long that his story becomes more and more outrageous and ludicrous.
