Thrillers, Multicultural Detectives - Fiction, Crime Fiction, Police Stories
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Overview
When scientist Jonathan Gault is fired from his high-paying job at a military research facility, he is desperate to find new sponsors for his bizarre experiments. Gault's new racket is a deadly home security business for the ultra-rich: booby-trapping their property with high-voltage electricity and snake venom injection devices. Kate Ford, investigative journalist, is tipped off about Gault's shady business. She sets out to uncover his scheme, but soon finds that she may be in over her head, as Gault won't hesitate to use any means necessary to rid himself of the snoop on his trail. Larry Cole, Chief of Detectives for the CPD, is led to Gault by his investigation into the recent strange deaths of criminals in booby traps. Cole and Ford team up to try and stop the renegade scientist, who has now built a solar-powered vehicle equipped with a flamethrower and a laser beam, which he has nicknamed Red Lightning. Gault's ingenuity, coupled with his fondness for high-powered explosives and deadly snakes, may well make him the most powerful foe Cole has ever faced.Editorials
Kirkus Reviews
The forces of evil are loose in Chicago again, and once more Chief of Detectives Larry Cole stands between them and the city's total destruction. This time the heavies are Cherokee-born rogue scientist Dr. Jonathan Gault and his legless sidekick Christian Dodd. Thrown out of work when the army closed down his beloved Astrolab project, Gault, this reverse Batman, has taken his evil eye, high explosives, poisonous snakes, and maniacal Robin to the Windy City, where he teams up with a pair of biddable public servants to supply the city's wealthy with lethal booby traps that will decimate the local population of burglars and car thieves. When snoopy freelance reporter Kate Ford gets evidence that some of Cole's colleagues are covering up the manner of the small-time felons' deaths, the race is on. Gault and Dodd, armed with the choicest arsenal of death-dealing weapons since the glory days of Fu Manchuþpoisoned darts, death rays, mechanically revivified museum fossils, a flame-throwing wheelchairþhave at Cole and Ford and their stalwart allies, who interrupt their ongoing soap opera of romances, disguises, and shifting allegiances (Violent Crimes, 1997, etc.) long enough to freeze in terror before the messengers of slithering death until fighting back in a final demented tableau. Holton's fifth and most satisfyingly unnuanced wallow in mayhem seems destined not so much for the movies as for a Saturday morning cartoon.Book Details
Published
April 15, 1999
Publisher
Doherty, Tom Associates, LLC
Pages
320
ISBN
9780312871253