Far removed from his usual milieu of the New York Museum of Natural History, Lincoln Child and his imagination venture off the coast of Greenland – and then many miles below the sea – for DEEP STORM, his latest solo technothriller.

There, Dr. Peter Crane is called to the Storm King oil rig for a project. As with everything involving the government, the reason for him being there are super-secretive and hush-hush – so much so that they won’t even tell him for a while. All he knows is that he’s been summoned, and is surprised when a submersible takes him far below the surface to an undersea dome, which houses the project known as “Deep Storm.”

Recently, some of the 400 or so workers in this multilevel facility have fallen ill with a bizarre, unexplainable host of symptoms. Crane assumes rightly it has something to do with the research being conducted – information to which he is not privy until he’s told it involves raising the lost city of Atlantis. But as it turns out, that’s merely a cover for a far greater discovery with untold repercussions.

To reveal more would be cheating, but clearly Child aims to merge the otherworldly wonder of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY with the submerged suspense of Michael Crichton’s SPHERE. Throw in elements from Stanislaw Lem’s SOLARIS and even Richard Preston’s THE HOT ZONE, and you have an intriguing sci-fi thriller with a core mystery that you can’t wait to see played out.

Though the characters aren’t exactly rich and they sometimes act directly from the Thrillers 101 playbook, it’s the general what-are-we-dealing-with conceit that puts DEEP STORM into forward drive and keeps it floored. Its conclusion may not pack the expected panache following such a buildup, but Child knows high-tech adventure – just pick up any of his novels, including DEATH MATCH (whose final showdown is structured similarly to this), for proof.

DEEP STORM may not be his finest work, but as a fan, I wasn’t at all disappointed, either. I’ve got a soft spot for underwater adventures, especially those with a bent toward the unknown fantastic on the level of James Cameron’s THE ABYSS, and this novel is fits the bill – a scuba tank full of pure oxygen, at the ready to deliver a high to your brain. –Rod Lott

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THESE AUTHORS:
• THE BOOK OF THE DEAD by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
• DANCE OF DEATH by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child