Customer Reviews

The Trudeau Vector

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I picked up Juris Jurjevics' first novel,The Trudeau Vector, on Saturday morning and started reading after lunch. We were having old friends to dinner, but by the time they arrived I was so caught up in the tale that I watched the clock all evening, waiting for them to leave. More company arrived on Sunday afternoon, by which time I'd hunkered down in the spare room, completely engrossed in the frozen wasteland where Jurjevics' story takes place. Again, I could hardly wait to bid our guests a fond farewell. By Monday morning it was all I could do not to call in sick and stay in bed to finish the last few chapters.

The Trudeau Vector is a masterpiece of plot and pacing. It is rife with fascinating tidbits about the polar ice cap, cold war and post cold war politics, and the fragile nature of the world in which we live. It is peopled with characters whom I hope one day soon to meet again.

This is more than a story; it's an experience not to be missed. Do NOT wait for the paperback; this is well worth the full price of admission!

Juris Jurjevics is, in a sense, the man behind the curtain. He is the co-founder and publisher of Soho Press, whose intricate, well-written mysteries are set in exotic locales and peppered with unusual characters. As expected, THE TRUDEAU VECTOR --- Jurjevics's initial excursion into the world of authorship --- possesses these elements, and more.

A Canadian research center whose international team is ensconced in a remarkable but fragile ecosystem is rocked by the deaths of four of its members. Three are found in impossibly contorted positions, their irises and pupils erased, while the fourth inexplicably committed suicide by giving himself over completely to the frozen environment outside. Dr. Jessica Hanley, a quirky but brilliant epidemiologist, is sent to determine and isolate the cause of each death. These tragedies coincide with the departure of another member of the team, a Russian scientist who is picked up by submarine from her home country; unbeknownst to the world, except for Russia, the vessel is lost.

Admiral Rudenko, a mothballed Russian naval officer, is roused out of quasi-retirement to lead an expedition to find it. The mission is a success but a horrid one: the sub is discovered though all the passengers are dead, exhibiting the same symptoms that afflicted the three research team members.

THE TRUDEAU VECTOR proceeds along these two, slowly converging tracks, with the principals of each unaware of the other. Hanley wants to interview the Russian team member who left on the day of the killings, not knowing that she has been the victim of the same malady aboard the submarine. Meanwhile, Rudenko, who is unaware of the deaths at the research center, is sent there to pick up the remaining Russians.

Jurjevics's pacing is nothing short of marvelous; he is in no hurry here, but his narrative is anything but plodding. His unseen and unknown microbiotic serial killer could strike again at any moment, which increases the tension factor one-hundredfold. He also peppers his story with marvelous little factoids, the product of which is obviously yeoman's research, yet these items never get in the way of his story or characters. Hanley would be a necessary irritant in lesser hands; here, one actually begins to like her, partly due to her brilliant intuitiveness as she assembles the minutiae of the scene of the deaths (and the lives) of the four victims. It is Rudenko, however, who almost steals the show. Sturdy, dependable and gruffly likable, he is a knowing, underestimated pawn in a much larger game.

THE TRUDEAU VECTOR creates a bit of a conundrum. Jurjevics's debut is the stuff of wonder and immediately leaves one wishing for more --- though not at the cost of losing his guiding hand at Soho Press. If somehow the reading public could continue to have the benefit of both, it would be a blessing. Highly recommended.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

Two different stories are told simultaneously. Dr. Jessica Hanley is a well-known; nonconformist American epidemiologist who gets an emergency call to go to the Trudeau Research Center. Four of the scientists working in this remote center were found dead out on the ice. No one can figure the cause of these brutal deaths. There was a fifth scientist who mysteriously escaped via a Russian submarine. Admiral Rudenko is summoned out of retirement to locate the submarine. Jessie dearly misses her ten year old son Joey on this five month mission. Her tough exterior cracks just a bit whenever she in touch with her son. It is a stressful mission, where she races against the clock in this unforgiving environment, trying to find answers. Not known for being very socialable; Jessie is impressed by the hard work and dedication of the scientists at Trudeau. She falls in love with Jack Nimit, an engineer; and as she discovers there's no secrets in the Trudeau Center. Jessie and the Admiral do meet in a volatile ending. An excellent debut novel!

Jurjevics is a talented writer who can draw you in slowly as he builds the tension of trying to find the cause of the deaths of the four scientists. His decriptions of not only the protective clothing everyone must wear to survive outside the shelter, but the science involved in searching for the causes of the deaths, the state of the dead during the autopsies, and the weather itself are nothing if not compelling.

The development of the characters is a little less thorough. We know that Hanley felt she had no choice but to travel to the Artic to find the causes of the mysterious deaths - I wonder if we would be as harsh regarding her decision if she were a man.

The author introduces us to many characters - some more finely drawn than others, but I didn't find any of them to be someone I actually cared about. And I was mildly surprised at Hanley's reaction to the death of a colleague at Trudeau.

Overall, though, I thought the book well written, the science interesting, the mystery sustained throughtout the book, and the Artic beautiful.

The submarine warfare technology of Tom Clancy's "Hunt for Red October"; the thrilling epidemiological detective work of Michael Crichton's "The Andromeda Strain"; the stunning descriptions of breathtakingly beautiful landscape from Barry Lopez's "Arctic Dreams"; the intimate understanding of the Inuit culture and the Inuktitut language from Canada's Farley Mowat; the deep and abiding concern for the environment in general and global warming in particular that has been showcased around the world by David Suzuki; the clever portrayal of the Canadian political climate from Hugo Award winning sci-fi author Robert Sawyer; and the cold war geopolitical tensions reminiscent of Frederick Forsythe's "The Day of the Jackal"! Quite a powerful eclectic blend, wouldn't you say? And yet, this is precisely what Juris Jurjevics has achieved with his timely political thriller set in the bleak Canadian Arctic Winter "The Trudeau Vector".

Four staff members of Arctic Research Station Trudeau are found dead close to the polynya where they were conducting their research. Three have obviously been killed by some unknown yet extraordinarily powerful and virulent agent, and the fourth is discovered lying nearby, naked and frozen solid having succumbed to profound hypothermia in the frigid dark depths of an Arctic night. Whether the cause of death is inorganic or organic, man-made or natural, bacterial or viral or even a mutated prion similar to that which causes the dread mad cow disease is not known. A hair-raising night-time parachute insertion drops solo epidemiologist Jessie Hanley into ARS Trudeau to work her well known combination of brute force scientific research coupled with near magical leaps of intuition. The devastating pathogen with an unheard of and completely terrifying 100% mortality rate must be found and controlled!

I just don't understand why this novel is so little known and hasn't vaulted Juris Jurjevics onto the best seller lists. The science is exciting, informative and yet written in language that lay readers will grasp. The brutal physical, technical and personal realities of living in the close confines of an Arctic research environment are portrayed in vivid detail. The epidemiological detective work will have any reader hanging on the edge of their seat. The characters are fully developed and even the romance is warmly realistic without that sense of gratuitous inclusion that one often feels about sex and intimacy in a novel.

A highly recommended page turner that deserves a much, much broader audience.

Paul Weiss

Apocalypse then, apocalypse now - apocalypse is a trend in contemporary literature. However few portray it so realistically, with such harrowing design as does Latvian born author Juris Jurjevics His debut novel transports readers to the Trudeau Research Station in the Arctic. Both the Station with its myriad scientific marvels and the unforgiving yet beautiful cold of the far North are painted with a true word brush.

Cofounder and publisher of the Soho Press, Jurjevics knows his way around both plot and execution. "The Trudeau Vector" will fascinate us just as it may cause worry and wonder, simply because Jurjevics can render the unthinkable possible.

International scientists have gathered at the Trudeau Station for six months of unforgiving winter and challenging work. This scenario abruptly changes when three of the scientists are found dead. Evidently their deaths were horrible, and the cause is unknown.

Enter an American epidemiologist, Dr. Jessica Hanley, sent to discover what caused the untimely deaths. As the Station is numbed by the loss of colleagues and the brutal cold, there is activity in Moscow. Retired Admiral Rudenko is asked to locate a Russian submarine that has gone off the radar screen in Norwegian waters. His search and Hanley's investigation come together in surprising and threatening ways.

Film and television actor Robertson Dean delivers an excellent voice performance, both somber and compelling as suspense mounts and the world seems poised for disaster.

- Gail Cooke

Dr. Jessie Hanley, an eccentric hippie-style, world renowned epidemiologist is once again pressed into a dangerous medical crisis by the Center of Disease Control in Los Angeles. Famous for her around the world missions to uncover mysterious deaths that cause epidemics, Jessie is the top scientist on the list to assist in the investigation of four sudden deaths at a Canadian research facility in the Arctic circle. The bodies were found on the ice grossly and unnaturally contorted, horrible frozen screams crystallized on their faces, their eyes were missing. Immediately Jessie is flown to the coldest place on earth only to be parachuted downward to a frozen and frightening wasteland where in the midst of a nightmare from hell, top international scientists are fighting for their lives!

Admiral Georgi Rudenko, ready to retire as one of Russia's finest Navy officers who earned his high rank when performing death defying feats during the Cold war, is suddenly recalled to active duty for a final mission. One of their finest submarines is missing in the area of the Norwegian sea with close to a hundred crew members and a Russian scientist that they had recently picked up from a research station on an island in the Arctic.

While Jessie commandeers in-house volunteers to hasten the process of setting up multiple laboratories and quarantine tents, she realizes soon that her and her fellow scientists are up against something the world has never encountered. Biological? Biohazard? Biowarfare? The arctic research facility is thrown into panic and despair as fear of the unknown haunts each members dreams.

Together with help from the Russians who make a surprise appearance via submarine that pops out of the ice like a breaching whale, the hunt is on for a deadly killing agent that threatens all their lives. The clock is ticking, two more die, harrowing autopsies reveal no answers, and Jessie is forced to brave 40 below temperatures as she braves out onto the ice floes looking for clues.

Juris Jurjevics first suspense novel, The Trudeau Vector, is an intense mystery thriller offering up a blend of espionage and a bioscience mystery that together offers the reader 400 pages of chills and breathtaking scenes full of page-turning macabre and intellectual intrigue. Readers will be totally engaged as they experience high tech arctic survival gadgets, bioscience, the flora, fauna, the stunningly beautiful environment of the Arctic Circle, heart stopping submarine missions, secrets, spies, and yes..... love on the ice!

This author shows talent for creating a well rounded plot, polished writing and well developed characters. The book is often humorous, yet totally horrifying, and presents us a window into how the mind can affect human nature within an atmosphere of strict isolation devoid of sunlight, warmth, people, entertainment, and the cozy comforts of home. I sure would love to see Jessie come back in a series of other science thrillers!! My rating without hesitation is Five Stars!

The measure of a good thriller, for me, is its ability to keep me involved in the journey until we reach the destination. This novel certainly met that criterion.

What intrigued me was the science, the descriptions of the environment,and the ever-present possibilities of physical, biological and chemical danger. In this novel, the challenges of sifting what is actual from what might be possible or probable is made more challenging by the remote location and, inevitably, the politics.

Mr Jurjevics creates a rich environment in this novel and peoples it with some interesting if occasionally stereotypical characters.

I recommend this novel to readers who like their thrillers action-packed and filled with possibilities. Ultimately, I was dissatisfied by the ending and that is reflected in my rating. Am I being fair? Well, I can only suggest that you read the novel and decide for yourself.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

I have always been drawn to and interested in books about the Arctic or the Antarctic, or for that matter any story where weather extremes are central to the plot. This book by Jurjevics certainly did not disappoint in that regard. The one thing Jurjevics makes sure you know is the Arctic is as inhospitable and unforgiving as any place on earth.

The Trudeau Vector is a medical mystery of sorts, but nothing like the type of thing that someone like Robin Cook writes. Instead, this story starts with the grisly death of a group of research scientists at the Trudeau Research Center (not a real place) in the Arctic. The deaths and the complete mystery behind the deaths have a terrifying effect on the other scientists at the station. An unheard of mid-winter emergency medical assistance request goes out to the California based private and non-profit infectious disease center for which Dr. Jessica Hanley (epidemiologist) works. Soon thereafter Hanley and her medical equipment are dropped--literally--into this extremely dangerous environment. But things are not always as they first appear. There are people at the station who are not relieved to have Hanley on-site and who don't really want her to discover the cause of the deaths. Not only does Hanley have to deal with those forces, but she also has to deal with an unknown medical killer that is faster acting and potentially more deadly than Ebola.

The race to find this vector is not really what I would term "page turning" excitement, but once it becomes apparent that murderous forces are involved, the book becomes more interesting. It is not clear to me whether or not Jurjevics is trying to make a point about the fragile nature of our environment and the "supposed" affect that global warming has on it. But it seems to me that he takes a couple of cheap shots at the United States as the cause for all concern. Not one word is mentioned about natural variability and Arctic oscillation as a possible cause for ice melt. So, I would have to say that his views, as they came out in this book, were a bit of a distraction.

Altogether, this is a very good book by first time author Jurjevics. His Jessica Hanley character is multi-faceted and has enough interest around which a series can be written. If Jurjevics writes another book, particularly with this character, I'd buy it.

I love a book which has me asking this question! A laudable debut by Juris Jurjevics, and I hope to read more from him in the future. He brought the Arctic alive and did a commendable job of explaining the science well enough that the scientific specifics were perfectly understandable. I agree with some reviewers who complained that characters were flat -- but the important characters were anything but, they were brought vividly alive for me -- Hanley and the Russian admiral and captain especially. Not a flawless novel, no -- but definitely a novel worth reading! I hope Jurjevics continues to bring us smart fiction -- the existing field is lamentably thin.