I felt in need of a good, fast-moving thriller - and found it, big time, in Greg Bear's Quantico. I wasn't familiar with Bear's work - he sadly died last year - who was mainly known for his science fiction. Quantico is very hi tech and scientific and is set in the very near future. A bunch of fresh graduates from the FBI training centre at Quantico are plunged into what seems to be a rightwing Christian fundamentalist plot to produce industrial quantities of anthrax but turns out to be something far bigger and (incedibly) even worse.
Bear is superlative in handling complex science and the forest of acronyms which modern intelligence agencies has spawned. His characters have back stories and complexity. They all have redeeming features. Some have truly horrific secrets. The most impressive thing about Quantico, though, is that in more than 400 pages there wasn't a single dull or ineffective sentence. My interest - and I am not at all scientific - didn't flag once. I shall certainly read Quantico's successor Mariposa and then sample some of his other prize-winning work. Darwin's Radio sounds like my kind of thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment