Triple thrills

Brilliant, arrogant at times in his public persona (though not in private, friends said), Michael Crichton was 6-feet-9-inches tall and seemingly larger than life, driven by insatiable curiosity and inexhaustible intellectual energy. Among the projects left unfinished at his death in 2008, at the age of 66, was a partial draft plus notes for a novel involving a volcanic eruption (with complications, to put it mildly) on Hawaii. Crichton’s wife, Sherri (his fifth; they were married in 2005), held on to this unfinished work—which Crichton himself, she has said, was particularly fond of—hoping to find a suitable candidate to flesh out the draft and complete the novel. Eventually she connected with James Patterson (who really is, as the dust-jacket copy claims, “the most popular storyteller of our time”). Her choice was brilliant. Patterson took the job on, and the result is Eruption.

I have friends who share many of my literary tastes but sneer at Crichton and, even more so, Patterson. Let a thousand flowers bloom. I devoured this collaboration (let’s call it). I will not spoil the unfolding of the narrative, but without any risk of doing that I can say Eruption is both terrifyingly plausible and (at its heart) deeply, blackly comical. Will a strange brew of hubris and sheer fecklessness and NIMBYism and bureaucratic inertia lead to The End of Life as We Know It?

I am proud to say I was among Rachel Howzell Hall’s early fans. She wrote a series of four crime novels featuring an LAPD detective, Elouise (“Lou”) Norton, who was raised in the black church—each book strongly influenced by Raymond Chandler, but with a voice and a background that were quite fresh.

Once Hall quit her day job to focus on fiction full-time, she shifted from police procedurals to novels that blended elements from other genres or sub-genres, always involving crime in some way but with a distinctive mix of domestic suspense, dark comedy, and sometimes horror. Keeping up with her work meant reading books I wouldn’t have picked up if she hadn’t written them!

Hall’s latest, What Fire Brings, is one of her twistiest. It’s yet another tale of a cunning predator and a resourceful woman who brings him down. Line by line, the narrative is repeatedly interrupted by bits of this and that in a wide range of typefaces: Someone has sent a text, perhaps, or the narrator is flipping through a notebook she’s found.

The book contains some strong language. If you’re intrigued but still unsure whether this novel would be your cup of tea, go to an actual bookstore, and flip through a copy of What Fire Brings. Then go all the way to the back of the book and read the acknowledgments in the author’s personal voice (which I have always found very appealing). You’ll know then whether you want to sign on.

Three years ago, a novel by Elliot Ackerman and Adm. James Stavridis (Ret.), 2034, landed on bestseller lists. That book centered on a war between China and the United States. Now Ackerman and Stavridis return with a sequel to 2034, set 20 years on in the world of that novel, but clearly with an eye on the much-lamented “polarization” said to beset our country today.

Ackerman is not only a novelist (and memoirist) with an impressive track record, he is also (the dust jacket tells us) “a Marine veteran, having served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart.” Whoa. Stavridis, too, had a distinguished military career (he was Supreme Allied Commander at NATO) and has also written a number of books.

Quite a duo. Add to their latest effort another theme du jour—“a radical leap forward in artificial intelligence”—and you have the ingredients for 2054. So long as I am in competent hands (as is clearly the case here), I have a weakness for this sort of premise.

2054 is much more appealing to me than a week’s worth of sober pieces droning on about the State of the Nation (especially just now). If you are of a similar persuasion, check it out.

—John Wilson is a contributing editor for The Englewood Review of Books and senior editor at The Marginalia Review of Books