Fri 17 Apr 2009
JAMES ROLLINS – Ice Hunt. William Morrow, hardcover, July 2003. Reprint paperback: Avon, June 2004.
Another of Rollins’ high-tech adventure thrillers, this time pitting Russian and American scientists and para-military teams against one another at the site of an abandoned polar cap laboratory where the results of horrific experiments, buried but not quite dead, have waited 70 years for the chance to feed again.
The fate of mankind rests on the outcome of the bloody struggle and I’m sure that you won’t think that I’m giving away anything if I tell you that mankind survives. After all, Rollins doesn’t want to wipe out everything that could keep his Tom Swiftian imagination from achieving more fictional successes.
Publisher’s Weekly is quoted as saying that “Rollins’s characters [are] fully drawn” in this “first-class roller-coaster.” Well, maybe fully but not deeply felt or imagined. As usual, the most compelling characterization is that of an animal (this time, a wolf), not surprising if you keep in mind that Rollins has a veterinary practice in Sacramento, California.
In case it wasn’t apparent from my lack-luster review, I ended my flirtation with Rollins’ work with this book.
April 17th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
I enjoyed Ice Hunt on it’s own goofy terms. Rollins has gotten a bit better though, and his The Black Order was actually entertaining and fairly audacious. Of course when you consider the standard for this kind of thing used to be writers as literate and entertaining as Hammond Innes, Geofrey Jenkins, Gavin Lyall, and Desmond Bagley Rollins, Cussler, Ted Bell, Matt Reilly, and Jack Du Brul are something of a come down, but when you run out of Innes, Household, Lionel Davidson, or Victor Canning at least they are entertaining in a more minor key.
However, there are still a few good writers doing this sort of thing and I recommend Bill Napier, David Gibbons, Steve Berry, Preston and Childs, and with some reservations Raymond Khoury (The Last Templar). You may have to lower the literary standards of the genre a bit, but they are no worse than some of the later Alistair Maclean’s when he stopped writing novels and churned out “screen scenario’s” vaguely disguised as novels. In the long run it’s the reading public more than the writers who determine what is acceptable. Afterall, I still haven’t figured out what anyone sees in Tom Clancy’s prolix rehashes of Janes Fighting Ships, but you can’t argue with his sales.
April 18th, 2009 at 10:18 pm
Walter reads most of those current day spy/thriller authors, I believe, and I would too, if I had just a little more time in the day, and not so much (pure) detective fiction calling my name every night.
— Steve