Hurricane Fever - Tobias Buckell
Prudence “Roo” Jones returned to his old stomping grounds after he retired, sinking a chunk of a tidy nest egg into a spiffy catamaran so he could tour the Caribbean at will. He took his only living kin, his nephew Delroy, under his wing and settled down. Roo figured that he could live out his days sailing from island to island, dodging the omnipresent hurricanes that batter the slowly drowning landscape, occasionally ducking into a harbor to tip a Red Stripe with friends and replenish his larder.
That was before he got the mysterious phone call from his old running buddy Zee, a message that started by telling him, “…if you’re getting this message from me, it means I’m dead.” Yeah: dead. In another life he and Zee had done important work, and Roo knew without having to ask that his friend had died for something just as important. That’s why he did what the voice message asked; and that’s how the former Caribbean Intelligence Group operative’s once-quiet retirement turned upside down.
Not only was there a damned good reason, somebody made it personal…
| Tobias Buckell’s second novel about CIG agents (a not-quite sequel to Arctic Rising), Hurricane Fever combines the fevered kick-butt action of your average James Bond novel with speculative fiction positing a post-global climate change world of vanished islands and coastlines after the polar ice caps have melted. The speculative aspects are well within the realm of possibility – probability, in fact – while the action scenes are as gleefully unlikely as anything that ever dripped from the pen of Ian Fleming.
Buckell sets his action-adventure against the backdrop of the string of islands that comprise the Caribbean arc, as Roo sails from one dormant volcano sticking out of the ocean to the next. Though the text is spare, the author manages to convey a flavor of the islands not often glimpsed by the tourists from the ubiquitous cruise ships. That includes the hint of contempt with which locals tend to view the sunburnt, pale-skinned interlopers. Roo’s is a world inhabited by a duskier version of humanity, one more likely to be clad in paint-stained jeans than Tommy Bahama. |
When it comes to that action, it’s fast-paced and violent, as befits a retired spy called on to use his old skills. Like any good thriller there’s a mysterious, beautiful heroine who turns out to have mad skills of her own (such as steering a catamaran with her feet). Unlike Bond or a Schwarzenegger hero, Jones finds himself on the receiving end of some violence, meaning a bit of suspension of disbelief is called on as he keeps on creating mayhem – it’s usually the long-haired eastern European mercenary who can survive multiple bullet wounds, right?
No one will confuse Hurricane Fever with great literature, but it certainly makes for fun reading. Buckell’s written us a likable hero and ginned up a villain his readers will be happy to see receive his comeuppance. His villainy is nothing new; pretty much a garden-variety super-rich evil-doer with a couple of loose screws, ready to lay waste to the world to add more gold to his already-overflowing coffers. The method of this scoundrel’s madness is a combination of historical research and speculation, just the sort of plotline that makes a reader believe Rupert Murdoch could be plotting something like this right now.
A little thin, but definitely worth reading: Hurricane Fever rates a solid four stars out of five; good enough that I’m now on the hunt for a copy of Arctic Rising.
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