Unlike some of the other reviewers, I was not a fan of Karen Dionne's first novel, Freezing Point. In fact, I wouldn't have picked up Boiling Point given that experience, except for the fact that I have read a bit on volcanic activity and had a long plane ride in my immediate future. I suppose the good news is that the plot/science in Boiling Point is not nearly as silly and over-the-top as in Freezing Point and that certain aspects of the writing are improved this go around.
On the other hand, I don't really understand or agree with the increasing trend in allegedly thrilling books, movies, and TV shows of opening with a taut action scene and then immediately backtracking to a time before it occurs and ramping back up to that critical moment, especially in this case. Yes, I understand that thrillers need to have a hook, but when you know by the end of page 2 that the volcano is going to explode and the bad guy is identified quite early on, any pretense of suspense falls quickly away. Since the eruption takes up the rest of the book and the only (minor) mystery is the lack of clarity about the precise relationship between the illegal dumping and the bad guy's scheme, there's no suspense to propell one to turn the page. Add to that the abundance of unlikeable characters, the overly convenient familial and romantic interests between all of them, and the fact that the bad guy's scheme is ultimately not really causally related to the natural events which do occur, you end up with an action/rescue yarn that falls far from the science-gone-wrong yarns of Crichton or the clue-tracking of Dan Brown. (State of Fear (four stars), which was not Crichton's best, is more thought-provoking on global warming and provides a greater variety of action sequences.) What you get with Boiling Point is a bookish version of Dante's Peak--with all the same action sequences (the pyroclastic cloud; the SUV floating in the current; the tires melting; the rescuer jumping into the hot, acidic lake to save others; etc.). And while some of the description is vivid, it's not enough to carry the book. The author's attempts to broaden the scope of the plot are tangential and actually end up undercutting the plausibility of the bad guy's scheme, given the numbers (in terms of henchmen, locations, and funds required) implied.
A few pet peeves: While there are less than in Freezing Point, the overuse of cliche' "like" comparisons is an irritant. Conveniences in relationships, geography, and events are all too frequent. References to events in the prior book are too numerous and too cryptic. And the amount of internal exposition can at times be overwhelming. For example, on p. 33 one character asks the other "What's got you in such a good mood?" After five paragraphs and almost two pages, during which the other reflects on his job, the bonus he expects, schoolgirls and the Japanese terms for them, a specific girl, hiking, secret knowledge of what is going on, the nature of science, the celebrity of his benefactor, the derivation of his own stage name, and the lack of his colleague's appreciation of him, the first character finally gets around to responding to his own question. By then, I had entirely forgotten that a question had been asked, much less what it was.
In the end, not enough suspense, not enough unique action, and not enough science in the explanations or enough scope in the plot to hold my interest.
