Eruption

Working from a partial manuscript discovered in Crichton's archives, Patterson (the Alex Cross series) delivers a surprisingly seamless posthumous collaboration with the Jurassic Park author, who died in 2008. The action opens in 2016, when a class field trip to Hawaii's Hilo Botanical Gardens is disrupted by the sudden appearance of deadly black stains on the park's banyan trees. Nine years later, Hilo makes headlines again: Mauna Loa, an active volcano inside the park, is days away from an eruption that could unleash more lava than it has in a century. In addition to endangering nearby communities, the lava is likely to reach a cache of secret materials the U.S. military is storing on the Big Island, which could lead to the release of toxic waste--likely the same stuff that killed Hilo's trees. The U.S. government assembles a team of experts to avert disaster, led by Mark Rivers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and geologist John MacGregor, who heads the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. Together, they race against the clock to divert the lava flow in hopes of saving life on Earth. As in Crichton's lesser works, character comes second to plot, but the plot is suitably breakneck and plausible. Crichton's fans won't be disappointed. (June)

Two master storytellers create one explosive thriller. Mauna Loa is going to blow within days--"the biggest damn eruption in a century"--and John "Mac" MacGregor of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory leads a team trying to fend off catastrophe. Can they vent the volcano? Divert the flow of blistering hot lava? The city of Hilo is but a few miles down the hill from the world's largest active volcano and will likely be in the path of a 15-foot-high wall of molten menace racing toward them at 50 miles an hour. "You live here, you always worry about the big one," Mac says, and this could be it. There's much more, though. The U.S. Army swoops in, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff personally "drafts" Mac into the Army. Then Mac learns the frightening secret of the Army's special interest in Mauna Loa, and suddenly the stakes fly far, far beyond Hilo. Perhaps they can save the world, but the odds don't look good. Readers will sympathize with Mac, who teaches surfing to troubled teens and for whom "taking chances is part of his damned genetic code." But no one takes chances like the aerial cowboy Jake Rogers and the photographer who hires him to fly over the smoldering, burbling, rock-spitting hellhole. Some of the action scenes will make readers' eyes pop as the tension continues to build. As with any good thriller, there's a body count, but not all thrillers have blackened corpses surfing lava flows. The story is the brainchild of the late Crichton, who did a great deal of research but died in 2008 before he could finish the novel. His widow handed the project to James Patterson, who weaves Crichton's work into a seamless summer read. Red-hot storytelling. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.