1991; 368 pages. New Author? : No,
but it’s been a while. Genres: Technothriller;
Action-Intrigue. Overall Rating : 7*/10.
Sometimes money laundering can be in the best
interest of both parties.
For instance, if a sovereign
nation, such as Russia, wants to finance a cutting-edge technological research
project at a powerful private-enterprise industrial corporation in a different
country, such as Japan, it’s best for all concerned that nobody else knows about it.
One common method is to
convert millions of dollars into something called debentures,
loan certificates that are unsecured.
Pass them through a couple of rounds of unscrupulous bankers’ hands so
they can’t be traced, then to the intended receiver, and make sure everybody
keeps their mouths shut.
Alas, things go haywire if
those debentures disappear during one of those banking handoffs. If those certificates aren’t found, and in a
hurry, heads will roll. Literally. But where are we going to find someone with
experience in prying into clandestine operations?
How about an ex-CIA agent,
Michael Vance, Jr.?
What’s To Like...
There are two main storylines
in Project Daedalus: our protagonist,
Michael Vance, tries to figure out where the debentures went; and an aerospace
corporation works at developing a plane (as shown above in the book cover) that can
achieve “hypersonic” speeds of Mach 25 or so.
Eventually the two plot threads converge, setting up an exciting climax.
I enjoyed the various
settings. We start out in Athens,
Greece, with a visit to nearby Knossos, Crete.
We also spend time in London, where the money-laundering shenanigans are
taking place; and Hokkaido, Japan, where the plane testing is underway. And let’s not neglect to mention several
goosebump-raising trips into the upper atmosphere. All these places felt “real” to me.
The book was written in 1991, and I chuckled at some of the now-obsolete items. Messaging was done by telex, and decryption efforts were done via a cutting-edge technological device (for that era): a Lotus spreadsheet program on a 486 computer. I also liked the mention of the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, and was wowed when a plane did a “Mach 3 Immelmann maneuver”.
Everything builds to a
sustained, nail-biting ending. You might
have the fastest plane ever, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be brought down by missile-shooting enemy fighter planes and/or the excessive-heat conditions of the atmosphere.
Ratings…
Amazon: 4.2*/5, based on 159 ratings
and 48 reviews.
Goodreads: 3.50*/5,
based on 193
ratings and 11 reviews.
Excerpts...
To begin with, members of the intelligence
services of major nations didn’t go around knocking each other off; that was an
unwritten rule among spooks. Very bad
taste. Maybe you tried to get somebody
to talk with sodium pentathol [sic] or
scopolamine, but guns were stupid and everybody knew it. You could get killed with one of those
things, for godsake. (loc. 2148)
He slipped off the shirt he’d been wearing
in London, happy to be rid of it, and put on the first half of the
uniform. Not a bad fit. The trousers also seemed tailor-made. Then he slipped on the wool topper,
completing the ensemble.
“You would make a good officer, I
think.” Andrei Androv stood back and
looked him over with a smile. “But you
have to act like one too. Remember to be
insulting.” (loc. 6585)
Kindle Details…
You can pick up Project Daedalus for free at Amazon right now. In fact, the other eight e-books Thomas
Hoover has tout here are also free.
I suspect this is a “for a limited time
only” deal.
“If a man owes you
a hundred dollars, you have power over him; if he owes you a million dollars,
he has power over you.” (loc.
4250)
There’s a fair amount of
cussing in Project Daedalus; I counted 18
instances in the first 10% of the book, including three f-bombs. There are several rolls-in-the-hay to boot,
since Vance crosses paths with an ex-lover along the way.
There were also a fair number
of typos, such as Vanced/Vance, wastin/wastin’,
and numerous missing quotation marks.
One recurring error involved the name of the prototype aircraft, “Daedalus I”, which the conversion program
often mistakenly rendered as “Daedalus /”.
I’m always happy when words
and phrases in foreign languages show up in the text. Here, lots of Russian,
Japanese, and Greek vocabulary
was used, which I liked, but they are not languages I’m proficient in. It would’ve been nice to have translations
supplied via footnotes or a glossary.
The main issue though, which
several other reviewers also pointed out, was the abundance of technical
jargon. Yes, Project Daedalus is
aptly marketed as a “technothriller”.
Yes, that implies there will be passages explaining technical stuff. But here, those passages are so lengthy, and
pop up so often that it slows down the pacing.
And let’s keep in mind, Mach 25 is an impossible speed for an aircraft
in Earth’s atmosphere. The technical
details about it are all fictional.
Despite that, I enjoyed
Project Daedalus. I skimmed through
those technical speedbumps (what the heck is a
“scramjet” anyway?), and refocused when the text got back to
advancing the storyline. There was lots
of Action-&-Intrigue to keep me turning the pages, and I was impressed that
the Japanese and Russian characters, of which there were many, were portrayed
as three-dimensional human beings, not cookie-cutter stereotypes.
7 Stars. One last thing. If you look in the Table of Contents, you’ll find there’s an entire chapter missing – Chapter 7. Now, I know of at least one author who does such a thing; he simply eschews Chapter 13 in any of his books. And to be fair, I don’t think the chapter is truly missing. It’s just a counting glitch. Still, what are the odds of this sort of oversight?
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