Darwin's Blade
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4.0 • 30 Ratings
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
Darwin Minor travels a dangerous road. A Vietnam veteran turned reluctant expert on interpreting the wreckage of fatal accidents, Darwin uses science and instinct to unravel the real causes of unnatural disasters. He is very, very good at his job.
His latest case promises to be his most challenging yet. A spate of seemingly random high-speed car accidents has struck the highways of southern California. Each seems to have been staged-yet the participants have all died. Why would anyone commit fraud at the cost of his own life? The deeper Darwin digs, the closer he comes to unmasking an international network specializing in intimidation and murder, whose members will do anything to make sure Darwin soon suffers a deadly accident of his own.
"A literary thriller like no other...A hard-charging, edge-of-the-seat tale."-Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
H"Stupidity kills. Absolute stupidity kills absolutely." Simmons, who has moved effortlessly from horror (Children of the Night) to science fiction (Hyperion; Endymion) to thrillers (The Crook Factory) obviously had a lot of fun writing this gripping suspense thriller about automobile insurance fraud rackets in Southern California. Former NTSB investigator Dr. Darwin Minor (Ph.D., physics) is the best at what he does. As the country's leading "accident reconstruction specialist," Darwin has saved the insurance industry millions, as well as solving the most confounding cases of vehicular stupidity. But suddenly, he finds himself the target of assassins, resulting in a wild car chase that is only the first of many spellbinding set pieces. Is Darwin being targeted for business reasons, or is the attack somehow tied to the ongoing federal investigation of the Alliance, a Russian mafia-type group that specializes in staging accidents to perpetrate insurance fraud? A delightfully bizarre inside joke concerns the "Darwin Awards," which celebrate those who improve the human gene pool by removing themselves from it, like the young man who attempts to break the land speed record by attaching a couple of rockets to his '82 El Camino and ends up splattered on a cliff face hundreds of feet above the highway. In the course of the novel, Darwin investigates several accident scenes that duplicate either Darwin Award-winning demises or urban legends. A breezy writing style, rollicking humor and ingenious descriptions of weird accidents make this action-packed thriller a real winner.
