Synopsis
Marine biologist and cave researcher Whitney Burke has not been able to focus since losing her assistant in a caving accident, but when she and her family join a NASA caving expedition, she must regain her old abilities or risk the lives of her family and colleagues who have been taken hostage by a group of radical criminals.
Reviews
While earning enthusiastic reviews for his thrillers (The Purification Ceremony, etc.), Sullivan hasn't sold in really impressive numbers. His fourth novel could catapult him onto national bestseller lists, however, for not only is it expertly crafted, it's one of the most exciting yarns of this millennium. In an elaborate cave system in eastern Kentucky, a moon rock lies hidden. This rock has superconductivity, which, if harnessed, will solve the world's energy crises that's why Robert Gregor, the young scientist who discovered its properties three years ago, killed his mentor, who threatened to claim the discovery for himself; Gregor then secreted the rock in the cave before he was captured by police. Now it's 2007 and NASA, to train for a return to the moon to mine further superconductive moon rocks, is sponsoring a media-saturated expedition into the cave system, an expedition led by renowned caver Tom Burke and including his daughter, Cricket, 14, but not his wife, Whitney, an expert caver haunted by a recent foray into those caves that killed her companion. As the NASA expedition begins, Gregor, aided by a guard, escapes from prison with two tough cons and heads for the cave to retrieve the moon rock. Most of the novel's intense action takes place in the underground labyrinth, a fabulous otherworldly backdrop that Sullivan exploits brilliantly as he rotates his narration among Burke's party (soon captured by Gregor and his cohorts), a rescue team guided by the fearful Whitney and a third team of NASA scientists and U.S. military who plan to get the rock at any cost. The novel is honeycombed with plot twists and cliffhangers, giving it a slightly contrived, Saturday matinee feel (and it'll make a terrific movie; Scott Rudin has optioned rights), but Sullivan's sensitively constructed characters give it weight and depth. This is a great summer read.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
A respected journalist and novelist, Sullivan returns with the story of a cave researcher who has sworn she will never return to the depths until her husband and daughter disappear on a caving expedition. A film is coming.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From the author of the good (The Fall Line, 1994) and the bad though inexplicably popular (The Purification Ceremony, 1997) comes a solid, exciting, well-told thriller. Seems there's an expedition deep into a labyrinth of underground caves (NASA wants to see whether people can be trained to mine the caves of the moon); seems there's a band of escaped cons, including a once-respected physicist who murdered his supervisor to protect the secrets of a moon rock with very unusual properties. The two groups meet each other in the labyrinth, where Tom Burke and his teenage daughter find their lives in jeopardy. Only Tom's wife, an expert spelunker who's currently terrified of going into a cave (there was this fatal accident a while back), can save them . . . if she can find them. Sullivan, a two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee for investigative journalism, is finally getting the hang of fiction, offering us characters we can believe in and a plot that is simultaneously fantastic and entirely plausible. Recommended for fans of fast-paced adventure novels with a scientific bent. David Pitt
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