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gervase_fenWhen I do some preparatory research for my Daggers marathons I scour the review sections of the broadsheets to see what the notable crime and thriller releases are each month. Cold Storage passed me by initially - mainly because the reviews appeared in the Science Fiction columns (and indeed a lengthy preview was run online at tor.com).
This is David Koepp's first novel, but he has decades of experience as a screenwriter, the most relevant films here probably being Jurassic Park (containment failure) and Panic Room (locked down claustrophobia). Jurassic Park was of course Michael Crichton's last popular bestseller, and the opening chapters here don't just homage his earlier The Andromeda Strain, they wink at the reader as if to say "Yes, I know, but it'll be worth it". In brief, something horrible came down with Skylab over Australia and then started incubating very slowly, and the prelude follows two special forces agents and a scientist into the Outback to deal with the results. Only two of them come back, and what they retrieve is then buried in a remote mountain storage facility.
Fast forward to the present, and said facility is now privatised, and a temperature regulating mechanism has failed thousands of feet down in the (theoretically inaccessible) sub basement 4. (Global warming has a lot to answer for). Can our two heroes - part-time security guards on minimum wage contracts - avert an extinction level event? Can one of the long retired special agents help them out - or will his back give out first?
Very much an outlier in this category, Cold Storage is a propulsive race against time thriller (the last section of the book has the heading "The Last Thirty Four Minutes") that works amazingly well through terrific characterisation, unlikely turns of events and inspired point of view narration (such as the unfortunate deer in the extract quoted.) This reminded me a lot of Stephen King, specifically the sympathetic, blue collar protagonists and the guignol splatterpunk (the fate of Mr Scroggins reads like a cut scene from Pet Sematary). I would be surprised if the judges crown this the winner, but I'm grateful that they've put it into the final six (especially as it meant I didn't have to try to finish Andrew Taylor's The King's Evil!)
This is David Koepp's first novel, but he has decades of experience as a screenwriter, the most relevant films here probably being Jurassic Park (containment failure) and Panic Room (locked down claustrophobia). Jurassic Park was of course Michael Crichton's last popular bestseller, and the opening chapters here don't just homage his earlier The Andromeda Strain, they wink at the reader as if to say "Yes, I know, but it'll be worth it". In brief, something horrible came down with Skylab over Australia and then started incubating very slowly, and the prelude follows two special forces agents and a scientist into the Outback to deal with the results. Only two of them come back, and what they retrieve is then buried in a remote mountain storage facility.
Fast forward to the present, and said facility is now privatised, and a temperature regulating mechanism has failed thousands of feet down in the (theoretically inaccessible) sub basement 4. (Global warming has a lot to answer for). Can our two heroes - part-time security guards on minimum wage contracts - avert an extinction level event? Can one of the long retired special agents help them out - or will his back give out first?
Very much an outlier in this category, Cold Storage is a propulsive race against time thriller (the last section of the book has the heading "The Last Thirty Four Minutes") that works amazingly well through terrific characterisation, unlikely turns of events and inspired point of view narration (such as the unfortunate deer in the extract quoted.) This reminded me a lot of Stephen King, specifically the sympathetic, blue collar protagonists and the guignol splatterpunk (the fate of Mr Scroggins reads like a cut scene from Pet Sematary). I would be surprised if the judges crown this the winner, but I'm grateful that they've put it into the final six (especially as it meant I didn't have to try to finish Andrew Taylor's The King's Evil!)
