Ghost Dancer

June 12, 2006
Bestseller Case (The Genesis Code
) offers a gripping contemporary thriller with an intriguing concept—that terrorists would seek to use the secrets of famed inventor Nikolai Tesla to develop a weapon to cripple the U.S. The prime plotter, Jack Wilson, who's recently released from prison, harbors a consuming hatred against America, stemming from both losing a patent idea to eminent domain and the country's oppression of his Native American ancestors. Allying himself with an al-Qaeda offshoot, Wilson assembles technology to duplicate what he believes was a harmonic resonance weapon used by the dead genius to cause the legendary Tunguska crater in Siberia in 1908. Since the U.S. intelligence services are riven by incompetence and wrangling, a businessman who may have helped Wilson to launder money winds up in charge of trying to foil Wilson's plot. High quality prose helps offset an improbable detour at the end leading to an unconvincing resolution.

July 1, 2006
The evils of genius are explored in this latest offering from Case, a pseudonym for husband\x7f and\x7f wife writing team of Jim and Carolyn Hougan. The novel begins and ends with Mike Burke, an American photojournalist living in Ireland, who becomes an unwitting accomplice in a terrorist plot orchestrated by deranged mathematician and ex\x7f con Jack Wilson. The first 200 pages recount, in vivid detail, the drugs\x7f for\x7f arms\x7f for\x7f diamonds deal that funds Wilson's doomsday mission. It's not nearly as interesting as the second half, which illuminates Wilson's plan, inspired by the late Croatian inventor Nikola Tesla. (The elegant eccentric claimed, among many other things, an ability to manipulate electromagnetic energy.) Case (" The Murder Artist," 2004) pens breathless conspiracy yarns that marry politics, history, and technology. Here, he delivers a swift plot and a cast of nefarious characters, from peevish government bureaucrats to shadowy operatives with connections to al\x7f Qaeda. It's a chiller of a thriller that seems all too feasible in a post-9/11 world.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)