An illegal plague virus is let loose from a runaway tanker in Yellowstone National Park on a national holiday. The PetroDyne Corporation wants to prevent the story leaking and a homicidal psychopath is also on the loose.
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Les Standiford is the highly acclaimed author of Spill, Done Deal, Raw Deal, Deal to Die For, and Deal on Ice, and is the recipient of the Frank O'Connor Award for Short Fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction. He is the director of the creative writing program at Florida International University in Miami, where he lives with his wife and their three children.
A routine disaster thriller--a biochemical spill threatens Yellowstone National Park--distinguished by a clean, literate prose style and some magnificent scenery. The narrative opens with the villain, known simply as Skanz, doing what he does best--tracking and killing. Skanz's current quarry is a disgruntled scientist of PetroDyne, the biochemical- arms manufacturer that employs Skanz as a roving hit-man. The scientist dies warning Skanz, ``You don't know what I've arranged''--but Skanz finds out after a truckload of one of PetroDyne's most toxic illegal products, a ``hemorrhagic fever derivative,'' is stolen, then accidentally driven over a Yellowstone cliff. Near the cliff is working-class hero Jack Fairchild, a park ranger whose laid-back manner and love of the land make him a pointed foil for Skanz and the murderous, fascist- like force that PetroDyne's amoral chief, with approval from Washington, sends into Yellowstone to contain knowledge of the spill and of its horrid effects--which include sending its victims, both human and animal, into a homicidal rage as blood boils out of their pores. With a vigorously described Yellowstone as a backdrop, the novel's second, swifter half details Skanz's violent pursuit of Fairchild and the band he gathers round him--including the driver of the stolen truck, the local medical officer, Fairchild's new girlfriend, and his old Indian buddy, Isaac. As the carnage intensifies, bodies fall to the ground like pine cones, with a fever-maddened mountain cat adding to the count: Will Fairchild and friends make it to freedom? A smoothly written debut novel, but stock if well-drawn characters (the noble Indian, the robber-baron industrialist) and an overbearing moralism (free spirit vs. Big Business) drag on the action, which ends in corn (``It was a big, big country. They walked out into the cool dark, together''). -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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Condition: Used: Good. Occasion - Bon Etat - Jauni - Spill (1995) - Poche. Seller Inventory # 1166353
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Paperback. Condition: Good. Near very good condition paperback reprint. ISBN 0330328409. 50723. Seller Inventory # 69699
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paperback. Condition: Fair. Wear present.Discolouration present.Fold creasing present.Foxing.Scruff marks and small marks present on the front cover and back cover.Scruff mark present at the sides of pages.Small mark present on a few pages. Tearing present.Dent marks present on the front and back cover. Stain marks present on the front cover, on the front of the first page, on the last page and at the sides of every page. Seller Inventory # E0204292
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