Quantum Spy hinges on the development of a "quantum computer," which will have information processors that use the properties of quantum mechanics to make themselves faster than even the best super-computers available today. Different researchers in the United States hunt down different routes to find one that works, while Chinese spies look for information from them and try to build from that research.
CIA agent Harris Chang is part of the U.S. effort to counteract Chinese operations and perhaps find sources to learn about China's own research into quantum computing. He's on an arc for big things within the agency, although there's still an undercurrent of mistrust regarding his Chinese heritage. Harris is the son and grandson of immigrants but grew up in the US and had a distinguished career in Iraq.
When a recruitment operation goes awry some of the blame attaches to him even though the fault was another officer's. The ripples from the failure spread outward, as Chinese intelligence learns who Harris is and simultaneously sews misinformation designed to bring him under suspicion and reaches out to him to try to bring him to China's side. Harris is curious about his family past, which the Chinese handler seems to know, but is not at all tempted to work for the enemy. Nevertheless, suspicion against him mounts and he struggles against what he knows to be an unfair judgment. Harris will have to work against his own colleagues as well as Chinese spies in order to clear his name, uncover the real mole and help close the trap on a foreign intelligence chief his boss wants to suborn.
Ignatius' other novels have a reputation for simple storytelling, direct movement, and plausible, clearly explained "MacGuffins" that drive the plot. Quantum Spy bats one for three, as he helps outline in pretty understandable prose exactly what kind of leap quantum computing could be for the country that develops it first. But his characterizations are either inconsistent, as in Harris Chang's case, or flat, as in the case of the eventual mole. Harris is either a great blooming espionage talent, a hopelessly naive lunkhead or a troubled young man disconnected from a past he wants to find. His role doesn't change organically so much as based on what a particular scene calls for. The mole and other characters that have pivotal roles come in way too much like generic entries from central casting, espionage thriller office. Their actions and motivations read more like entries from a file card than people making choices or responding to others.
There's an interesting cat-and-mouse game buried in The Quantum Spy and an interesting parallel between scientists trying to drag sense our of the randomness of the quantum universe and spies trying to drag sense out of the turns and counterturns of the espionage game. But the only way to find those things is to try to drag sense out of the mare's nest of a novel they're in, and that's work that a better story wouldn't ask of its readers.
-----
The Bomb Maker has a lot of strong points. Extensive research lets Perry detail the way Stahl and the anonymous bomb maker approach their work, creating the atmosphere of a life-or-death chess game as the two men make move and countermove. The tension is higher on Stahl's side because a mistake will cost him his life, but it's equally high for the bomb maker as Stahl's continued success builds the pressure on his unbalanced mind.
Although he is brought back only temporarily, Stahl quickly becomes involved in an affair with one of his subordinates, Diane Hines. Her presence on the bomb squad raises the stakes for him, since she too could fall to the bomb maker's twisted genius.
The affair between Dick and Diane is a little far-fetched, beginning on the evening after they first work together and progressing rather quickly from there. The course of true love may not be supposed to run smoothly, but when the story telling it has just as many fits and starts it makes things fall apart pretty quickly. The Bomb Maker is loaded with padding, some of it related to the bomb maker himself and others to different characters. And not even all of those are connected to the main story, which makes their lines even more rabbit trails than they might be otherwise.
The Bomb Maker is a rare miss for Perry, whose usual gift for narrative focus and realistic dialogue deserts him and undercuts the tension-filled disposal scenes and conflict between the Stahl and the bomb maker himself. It's not really a dud, but it certainly doesn't pack the punch he's led readers to expect.
-----
Medical examiner Laura Fanning and mercenary Rick Hayden are still recovering emotionally from the events of Panacea when a chance news item lets Rick know his brother is missing. Although they were both adopted and differed in age, Rick believes he needs to track his brother Keith, who liquidated all of his assets and disappeared into Africa after finding a strange blue-eyed primate. Laura accompanies him despite the danger, and the pair find themselves facing smugglers, unscrupulous pilots and a brilliant scientist who may be past the edge of madness and who might endanger them all to fulfill his deadly plan. But their discovery of what at first seemed like a lost species of lemur might be even worse, leading to events that could endanger the lives of millions.
Wilson's medical background gives him a very good handle on the genetic oddities of the primates at the center of the story and the so-called "God gene" they share with humans. In more than a few places his exposition enters MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over) territory, but most of the time it's in small enough doses to stay within the story. And after 40 years, he can write characters who are fairly engaging in spite of their shallowness and strongly stereotypical nature, as well as maintain tension across several acts of his story.
But he trips over many of the same things that hobbled him in the Repairman Jack series -- at crucial points he takes a left turn into the supernatural and invalidates nearly all of the terrestrial work he's done. In one of those novels, Jack's own arrogance leads directly to the deaths of two people he tried to help, but before we can see this take any toll on him we ramp up into the World Beyond and the problems of two dead people don't amount to a hill of beans. When we learn the secret behind the strange primates and their connection to Rick's missing brother, we almost immediately veer into the realm of the Intrusive Cosmic Entities and most of the science we had seen put to use in understanding the primates is rendered meaningless.
Wilson's a confessed fan of the "eldritch horror" of H. P. Lovecraft and ties most of his Secret History into a dispute between beings as vast and unknowable as Cthulhu itself. But he rarely manages the transition from the mundane to the macabre as well as Lovecraft did and it sends him off track all too often. He can write horror thrillers -- Midnight Mass is one of the better vampire stories of the last 25 years and it skillfully weaves its horror and action thriller elements together. But when it comes to his signature meta-series, he can too often be too clever for his own good. The God Gene is one of those times.
No comments:
Post a Comment