From Publishers Weekly
Ravi Rashood, the arch-villain of Robinson's 2003 adventure,
Barracuda 945, returns for another round with Adm. Arnold Morgan, national security adviser for the former U.S. president, a militaristic Republican. Rashood and Morgan's showdown takes on some of the aura of the Holmes/Moriarty duel—Rashood has even named his new submarine
Barracuda II—thanks, in part, to Robinson's rather plummy prose; not even Clive Cussler would have a character utter "Streuth" as an expletive. At 64, the crusty Morgan has earned his retirement and married his longtime love (and longer-time secretary), Kathy O'Brien. The recently elected Democratic president, "peacenik" Charles McBride, has little use for Morgan's services; Morgan's sidelining gives Hamas General Rashood the opening he needs to hatch another nefarious plot. Robinson builds the story's tension slowly; the lesser lights newly installed in federal security positions are slow to put together the pieces of seemingly unrelated events—including the murder of the world's leading geophysicist in London and the surprising eruption of Mount St. Helens. Rashood's plan, which tangentially includes evergreen Western foes Russia, North Korea and China, involves triggering an apocalyptic mega-tsunami via volcanic eruptions caused by a nuclear-tipped guided cruise missile launched from the aforementioned
Barracuda... whew! Robinson's full-bodied, measured prose has a retro feel, and his narrative, studded with informative historical and political tidbits, turns every new setting into its own short story.
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Fans of Robinson's submarine thrillers will be delighted with this latest. Retirement to Admiral Morgan is not a welcome prospect, and sure enough the former National Security Advisor sniffs out a diabolical plot against the U.S. With tsunami and other natural disasters in the news, the threat seems unsettlingly plausible. David McCallum masters the pace and action as a potential geologic disaster looms. He reels off details of the vast mobilization of the Navy's assets, complete with search coordinates, military hardware, and other jargon. McCallum commands the sudden shifts of action and reaction, and he conveys both subtle menace and spoken outbursts with superb skill, and understatement. Listeners won't want to miss a single word. R.F.W. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine--
Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
