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Editorial Reviews
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It takes a while before Eileen Reed, a homicide detective in Colorado Springs, makes the connection between an earthquake in a place where earthquakes don't usually happen and a series of other strange events. There's a suicide at a military base and the discovery of the mutilated corpse of a young woman scientist in the Colorado Great Sand Dunes, the locale of the infamous Taos Hum, which is believed by ufologists to be evidence of alien visitations. But once Reed and Dave Rosen, her partner, realize that the suicide was a murder and the victim was connected to a secret project overseen by an ex-senator who may be manipulating the climate to further his own megalomaniacal ambitions, Eileen begins putting the coincidences together.
It takes a while before Eileen Reed, a homicide detective in Colorado Springs, makes the connection between an earthquake in a place where earthquakes don't usually happen and a series of other strange events. There's a suicide at a military base and the discovery of the mutilated corpse of a young woman scientist in the Colorado Great Sand Dunes, the locale of the infamous Taos Hum, which is believed by ufologists to be evidence of alien visitations. But once Reed and Dave Rosen, her partner, realize that the suicide was a murder and the victim was connected to a secret project overseen by an ex-senator who may be manipulating the climate to further his own megalomaniacal ambitions, Eileen begins putting the coincidences together.
Eileen is carrying some heavy personal baggage. She's recently killed a criminal who, although he richly deserved it, is still causing her nightmares. She's deep into denial about a series of traumatic events in her childhood that make her unable to trust the man in her life or accept the fact that Alan Baxter, a retired professor who was on his way to meet the slain woman in the dunes, may be her long-lost father and may also be a murderer. When a friend in the CIA tracks down documents involving the construction of an earthquake machine hidden in dusty Pentagon files, and Eileen draws a line between the secret project and information her boyfriend decrypts from the computer of the murdered military man, she uncovers the outlines of a fiendish plot to cause the deaths of thousands of innocent people and pave the way for a political takeover of the U.S. In a thrilling, fast-paced conclusion, she manages to find and disable the device, and in so doing to save the nation as well as solve the mystery of her own origins. Author Bonnie Ramthun evokes the mysterious landscape of the desert Southwest with good descriptive touches and creates characters with interesting backgrounds and more emotional and intellectual texture than is usual in novels on the theme of criminal masterminds bent on world domination. There's even enough science to make the plot seem credible. Earthquake Games is a lively and suspenseful read with a heroine you'll want to meet again. --Jane Adams
From Publishers Weekly
Colorado Springs homicide investigator Eileen Reed stars in her second thriller, after Ground Zero. Reed is dispatched to a nearby military base to investigate the shooting death of an air force major. Nobody at the scene is very helpful, least of all the dead man's boss, Jacob Mitchell, a former congressman and presidential candidate who has now resumed work as a scientist heading up a top-secret project. While Reed and her partner, Dave Rosen, struggle along, another murder occursAthat of a young woman found dead in the Great Sand Dunes of Colorado's San Luis Valley, an area long known for unexplained physical events. UFO enthusiasts descend on the area, distracting Reed and Rosen with claims that otherworldly forces killed the woman. Eventually, Reed tracks the two murders back to Mitchell, then makes an even bigger discovery: Mitchell has gotten his hands on a special machine that can cause earthquakes and is planning to use it soon. Ramthun does a good job managing a story that teeters on the edge of believability by providing a counterbalance of fact-based scientific detail and historical research into earthquakes and government coverups. A lack of credible suspects besides Mitchell and a waning torque of suspense, however, burden her plot. Ramthun, a former "wargamer" for the Department of Defense, does get high marks for creating a highly atmospheric setting in both the physical and social landscape of Colorado. She also weaves in a couple of personal subplotsAa love interest for Reed and the surprising emergence of someone out of her pastAthat give her story warmth. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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