Darkness Falls
A Mark Beamon Thriller
Kyle Mills
Vanguard Press (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1-59315-459-3 (1593154593)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59315-459-2 (9781593154592)
Publication Date: November 2007
List Price: $24.95
Synopsis (from
the publisher): Erin Neal has been living a secluded life in the
Arizona desert since the death of his girlfriend and he isn't happy
when an oil company executive comes calling. A number of important
Saudi wells have stopped producing and Erin is the world's foremost
expert in resolving just these kinds of complications.
As far as he's concerned, though, he's left that world behind. Not his
problem. Homeland Security sees things differently. Erin quickly finds
himself stuck in the Saudi desert, studying a new bacteria with a
voracious appetite for oil and an uncanny talent for destroying
drilling equipment. But worst of all is its ability to spread.
It soon becomes clear that if this contagion isn't stopped, it will
infiltrate the world's petroleum reserves, cutting the industrial world
off from the energy that provides the heat, food, and transportation
necessary for survival. Erin realizes that there's something eerily
familiar about this bacteria. And that it couldn't possibly have
evolved on its own.
Review: A biological weapon threatens the world's oil supply in Darkness Falls,
the fifth Mark Beamon thriller by Kyle Mills. Unfortunately, execution
on this intriguing premise is so poor that that any credibility in the
plot vanishes along with the reader's interest long before the
anti-climatic conclusion.
The plot outline is simple and rather compelling: a bioengineered
bacteria, similar to that used to clean up oil spills, is created by an
environmentalist determined to save the world from itself (someone also
known popularly as an ecoterrorist), which is then introduced into a
supply of crude oil, contaminating the raw material and making it
unsuitable for refining into usable energy products. The world's
leading expert in this field is tapped to identify the source of the
contaminant and stop its spread before it's too late.
Inexplicably, Mills takes this promising story and populates it with
characters that are such extreme caricatures it is hard to take any of
them seriously. (Mark Beamon, the recurring character in this series,
is relegated to a minor role here that's completely overshadowed
by others.)
Erin Neal is a brilliant scientist who has retreated to self-sufficient
solitude in the desert after antagonizing virtually everyone of any
importance with his opinions on the state of the world's energy supply
and use; environmentalists, capitalists, scientists, politicians, and
anyone else in his path (including the reader). Jenna Kalin, Erin's
presumed dead
but just in hiding ex-girlfriend, is a self-serving moderate
ecoterrorist who has adapted an oil-consuming bacteria to work in the
oxygen-deprived depths of ANWR in Alaska. She doesn't care if the rest
of the world destroys their own landscape as long as they leave what
she considers hers untouched. Michael Teague is a radical ecoterrorist
determined to destroy modern civilization in order to save the planet
... as long as he can assure himself a comfortable spot in the new
world order. And a whole cast of government officials who are portrayed
as (typically) incompetent.
To make matters worse, far worse, the author introduces a sappy love
story between the two principal characters (Jenna and Erin) that would
be comical (think Lucy and Desi here; the parallels are so true they're
striking) if it weren't so tragically bad. Despite the potential for
global chaos, and the fact that they have the expertise to help, Jenna
and Erin refuse to cooperate with the authorities because they are concerned they might
implicate each other in the original outbreak. In the end, of course,
they go skipping down the yellow brick road together which is
appropriate since they are primarily responsible for there being no oil available for paving streets.
In the hands of an adept screenwriter, Darkness Falls
has the potential to be an interesting, topical movie. And maybe that's
where Mills went wrong here: he was thinking more about creating
blockbuster visuals with one-dimensional characters for a viewing
audience rather than crafting a thoughtful suspense story with
three-dimensional characters for a reading one.
Special thanks to Meryl L. Moss Media Relations for providing an ARC of Darkness Falls for this review.
Review Copyright © 2007 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved.
Mysteries in this series ...
Rising Phoenix
HarperCollins (Hardcover), August 1997
ISBN-10: 0-06-101248-3 (0061012483)
Storming Heaven
HarperCollins (Hardcover), August 1998
ISBN-10: 0-06-101250-5 (0061012505)
Free Fall
HarperCollins (Hardcover), May 2000
ISBN-10: 0-06-073333-6 (0060193336)
ISBN-13: asdf (asdf)
Sphere of Influence
Putnam (Hardcover), September 2002
ISBN-10: 0-399-14934-1 (0399149341)
Darkness Falls
Vanguard Press (Hardcover), November 2007
ISBN-10: 1-59315-459-3 (1593154593)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59315-459-2 (9781593154592)
Omnimystery keywords for Darkness Falls ...
Location(s) referenced: Arizona, Washington DC, Saudi Arabia, Canada.