Sangamon Taylor's a New Age Sam Spade who sports a wet suit instead of a trench coat and prefers Jolt from the can to Scotch on the rocks. He knows about chemical sludge the way he knows about evil -- all too intimately. And the toxic trail he follows leads to some high and foul places. Before long Taylor's house is bombed, his every move followed, he's adopted by reservation Indians, moves onto the FBI's most wanted list, makes up with his girlfriend, and plays a starring role in the near-assassination of a presidential candidate. Closing the case with the aid of his burnout roomate, his tofu-eating comrades, three major networks, and a range of unconventional weaponry, Sangamon Taylor pulls off the most startling caper in Boston Harbor since the Tea Party. As he navigates this ecological thriller with hardboiled wit and the biggest outboard motor he can get his hands on, Taylor reveals himself as one of the last of the white-hatted good guys in a very toxic world.
Publication Year: 1995
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This well-plotted novel introduces a new kind of science fiction. While most science fiction is rooted in physics and astronomy, this is a novel of environmental action and organic chemistry.
So, hey, that was enough to get me to pick up the book. I give it two stars, however, because of a jarring mismatch between the novel’s enjoyably smartassed narrative style and its dark turns. Villains don’t seem particularly menacing until, all of a sudden, they’re out for blood. Deaths, when they occur, land with no more weight than stubbed toes. By the time I got to the climax, I’d disengaged from the author’s spell and saw, instead, the creaking of the plot’s machinery as its parts clicked into place.
Recommended for: chemists, biologists, environmentalists, Bostonians
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