New York Times reviewer Janet Maslin today jumps the pub date of a techno-thriller coming next week, Paul McEuen’s debut, Spiral. Although she doesn’t seem to like the book personally, she clearly expects it to be a big seller.

She says Spiral, “…sounds like something written by Michael Crichton in his prime. It’s actually better than a lot of what Mr. Crichton wrote once his prime was over.”

Maslin admits that the beginning of Spiral is “…a galloping read. The pace stays frisky most of the way through,” but says the ending shares a fault with many other doomsday novels in that it, “…devolves[s] into wild yet perfunctory gore.”

Kirkus has similar reservations, but agrees that this story about a race to stop the proliferation of deadly viral micro-robots, is “…fast-paced and suspenseful,” if it sometimes stretches credibility. PW feels that the “…cast of endearing characters and their interpersonal relationships and struggles that make this emotionally intense and thought-provoking novel so readable.” The Booklist reviewer was the most enthusiastic, giving it a star and calling it possibly, “…the most gripping and engrossing thriller this reviewer has ever read in almost 50 years of thriller reading” and praises the author for presenting, “…brief, lucid disquisitions on science… and remarkably, he makes these ideas accessible to typical thriller aficionados.”

All in all, this sounds like a book poised for bestsellerdom.

Large library systems are showing very light ordering, with a few holds.

The book is set in Ithaca, NY; the author is a physics professor at Cornell.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 14th, 2011 at 8:42 am and is filed under 2011/12 - Winter/Spring, Thriller. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.