Overview
What would we do if a nuclear weapon was detonated in Washington, and the US government suddenly disappeared? What would we do if a terrorist organization announced that it had concealed nuclear weapons in ever major western city and then demanded that the entire planet embrace its twisted brand of Muslin fundamentalism? In Critcal Mass, nuclear interdiction expert James Deutsh and his tormented Muslim wife, Nabila, struggle to stop an impending nuclear attack on an American city. Along the way, they delve deep into the hidden world of nuclear terrorism and the experts who strive to contain it, and get a compelling look at the titanic battle within Islam over its own future--fundamentalist and rejecting, or compassionate and life-embracing? Like Whitley Strieber's classics Warday and The Coming Global Superstorm, Critical Mass is torn straight from the dark pages of a very dangerous and very possible future.
Synopsis
This searing new novel from bestselling author Strieber explores the unthinkable but very real possibility: Could terrorists get nuclear weapons?
Publishers Weekly
In this overheated thriller about nuclear terrorism from bestseller Strieber (2012: The War for Souls), Jim Deutsch, a CIA contract employee whose expertise is counterproliferation, has the world's fate in his hands as he races to foil the Islamic master-terrorist known as the Madhi. When Deutsch learns that some plutonium has been smuggled over the U.S. border from Mexico, he begins to suspect that America's elaborate homeland security apparatus has been compromised. His valiant efforts, alas, aren't enough to prevent the destruction of Las Vegas. As U.S. president William Fitzgerald ponders whether to launch devastating counterattacks aimed at much of the Muslim world, the tension rises, but the impact is undercut by some uneven prose ("She looked back at him as if from another dimension, her gaze resplendent with the unquenchable hope of youth, her mother's proud lips, determined, supremely confident that her dad was the great man she believed him to be"). (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Editorials
From the Publisher
"Whitley Strieber's Critical Mass is one hell of a book--a frighteningly plausible conspiracy-thriller that is so real it sometimes feels like an expose. Nuclear killers, lovers on the run, all-knowing, omnipresent listening and seeing devices - Critical Mass conjures up a world that is terrifying in its technological plausibility - if not probability."--Douglas Preston, New York Times bestselling author of Blasphemy "Nothing less than a certifiable page-turner. As I was reading it, I kept seeing the story unfolding on the big screen, just like The Day After Tomorrow. The threat of a nuclear strike against the U.S. is very real and very chilling, as are the kinds of people Strieber has conjured up in this really exciting yarn."--David Hagberg, USA Today bestselling author of Dance with the Dragon "Engrossing . . . A first rate exercise in literary paranoia."--Publisher's Weekly on The Grays "[A] truly spooky sci-fi tale."--People on The Grays
Publishers Weekly
In this overheated thriller about nuclear terrorism from bestseller Strieber (2012: The War for Souls), Jim Deutsch, a CIA contract employee whose expertise is counterproliferation, has the world's fate in his hands as he races to foil the Islamic master-terrorist known as the Madhi. When Deutsch learns that some plutonium has been smuggled over the U.S. border from Mexico, he begins to suspect that America's elaborate homeland security apparatus has been compromised. His valiant efforts, alas, aren't enough to prevent the destruction of Las Vegas. As U.S. president William Fitzgerald ponders whether to launch devastating counterattacks aimed at much of the Muslim world, the tension rises, but the impact is undercut by some uneven prose ("She looked back at him as if from another dimension, her gaze resplendent with the unquenchable hope of youth, her mother's proud lips, determined, supremely confident that her dad was the great man she believed him to be"). (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.