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Peter Evans is a young lawyer for multimillionaire George Morton. When Morton decides to renege on his donation to the National Environmental Research Fund (NERF) and then his car goes over a cliff and he is presumed dead, Peter is devastated. Then his home is broken into and Peter realizes that someone or some agency thinks he knows more than he does. Before long John Kenner, a scientist and a federal agent, enlists Peter's help to fight global eco-terrorism. Michael Crichton's STATE OF FEAR vacillates between being a Saturday afternoon cliffhanger melodrama and a long-winded lecture on weak science and popular environmental issues. Many chapters go on and on with characters discussing the truth behind the statistics and theories on global warming, native populations, and overall temperature findings. Well, it isn't so much a discussion as an intelligent good guy patiently explaining the 'truth' to dimwitted and smug opponents. The action sequences are plentiful, set in as varied environmental locations as can be found on earth, with the cast of good guys risking death and mutilation. A simple secretary and a graduate student soon join Peter as backup to federal agent Kenner. They are dropped into ice craters, hit by man-made lightning, bitten by exotic octopus, outrun tsunamis, and are captured by cannibals. I still can't understand how these everyday people were able to withstand all of the fantastic catastrophes that were foisted upon them. And as to why a federal agent like Kenner doesn't have one professional and trained colleague to rely upon, but instead places the fate of the world into the not so capable hands of a lawyer, a secretary, and a graduate student still dumbfounds me. This abridged, British edition is read by John Bedford Lloyd and he does a capable enough job. There are many characters, many different accents and many male and female characters, so there's only so much he could do without creating caricatures of some. After the end of the tapes I still had questions about the story and I'm not sure if the writer left things unfinished or if it was the fault of this abridged version. There's also a follow-up composition by Michael Crichton where he mentions that the readers might wonder where he stands on the issues discussed in STATE OF FEAR. If any reader still wonders that, they weren't paying any attention. He then follows up with a diatribe against popular science, comparing environmentalism to the history of eugenics. This couldn't have been more inappropriate or distasteful. All in all, I wish I hadn't wasted the six hours it took me to listen to this audio book.
Reviewed by Sharon Katz, April 2005
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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