Medusa's Child
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4.7 • 6 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
A pilot races through the sky to stop a nuclear catastrophe in this “compelling” thriller by the New York Times–bestselling author of Pandora’s Clock (People).
Vivian Henry hasn’t heard her ex-husband’s voice in three years, but it still fills her with fear. Dangerous and brilliant, Dr. Rogers Henry is calling because he’s dying. He offers Vivian a fortune in insurance money if she’ll carry out one final task for him: Take the Medusa device to Washington, DC. The Medusa is his life’s work—a thermonuclear bomb capable of knocking out all modern technology in the country—and he wants her to deliver it to the Pentagon before it falls into the wrong hands.
Cargo plane captain Scott McKay is miles above the ground when the Medusa begins to speak. A recording of Dr. Henry’s voice announces that the device is active and about to explode. With nowhere to land, Captain McKay must rely on his instincts and fly like he has never flown before to prevent a worldwide apocalypse.
Medusa’s Child proves once again that John Nance is the “king of the modern-day aviation thriller” (Publishers Weekly).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Novelist and Alaska Airlines pilot Nance is a champ at dreaming up spellbinding premises (as in his bestselling Pandora's Clock) about doomsday threats lurking in our friendly skies. Regrettably, he also excels at sabotaging his great plot ideas with amateurish writing. When, two years after his death, the widow of a deranged nuclear scientist is charged with delivering to the Pentagon a prototype of a Medusa Wave generator, capable of creating a devastating continent-sized electromagnetic pulse, she finds herself the victim of a diabolical plot to kill millions of innocent people and virtually destroy our computerized civilization. With the Medusa device counting down the minutes until it detonates the 20 megaton nuke that keys its power, the widow, a crew of three pilots and a beautiful young female scientist are trapped aboard a Boeing 727 cargo plane, desperately trying to figure out how to disarm the device while battling the onslaught of an 800-mile-wide hurricane. Inane prose ("She gripped his seatback even harder...triggering sensations he didn't have time to consider, but which somehow inside he knew were very pleasant"), cartoonish characters and comic-book theatrics (a mid-air rescue from the wing of a 727)) abound as Nance parlays a clever idea into an unintentional homage to the slapstick film lampoon, Airplane. Crichton's Airframe is a Concorde compared to this crippled bird. Author tour.
