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Executive Times |
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2006 Book Reviews |
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Polar
Shift by Clive Cussler |
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Rating: |
** |
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(Mildly Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Magnetic Polar
Shift is another Clive Cussler brand of the
Kurt Austin variety. What attracts readers to this? One dimensional, focused
villains, a hero cooler than words, and a plot that’s not character driven.
Here’s an excerpt, all of Chapter 3, pp. 45-54: Before Frank
Malloy had become a
high-priced consultant to the nation’s police departments, he’d been the
quintessential cop. He loathed disorder of any kind. His uniforms were
always pressed and sharply creased. In a holdover from his Marine Corps days,
his salt-and-pepper hair was cut close to the scalp military style. Frequent
workouts kept his compact body fit and muscular. Unlike many
police officers who found stakeout tedious, Malloy enjoyed sitting for hours in
a car, watching the ebb and flow of traffic and pedestrians, ever alert for
the slightest rent in the fabric of society. It also helped that he had an
iron bladder. Malloy was
parked on Broadway, checking out the steady parade of fast-walking pedestrians
and gawking tourists, when a man cut away from the crowd and made his way
straight for the unmarked NYPD cruiser. The man was tall and slim, and looked
to be in his thirties. He wore a tan, lightweight suit, wrinkled at the
knees, and scuffed New Balance running shoes. He had red hair and beard, and
his goatee was cut to a point. His shirt collar was unbuttoned and his tie
hung loose. Years as a beat cop had honed Malloy’s ability to size up people
at a quick glance. Malloy pegged the man as a reporter. The man came over to the car, bent down
so his face was level with the window and flashed his photo ID. “My name is Lance Barnes. I’m a
reporter with the Times. Are you
Frank Malloy?” The question spoiled Malloy’s triumph. “Yeah, I’m Malloy,” he said with a frown. “How
did you make me, Mr. Barnes?” “Easy,” the reporter said with a shrug of his
shoulders. “You’re sitting alone in a dark blue Ford in a neighborhood where
it’s practically impossible to get parking.” “I must be losing my touch,” Malloy said
dolefully. “Either that or I’ve still got cop written all over me.” “Naw,
I cheated,” Barnes said with a grin. “They told me at the MACC that you’d be
here.” MACC was shorthand for
the “I cheated too,”
Malloy said with a chuckle. “MACC called and said you were coming over.” He studied
the reporter’s face and decided he looked familiar. “We met before, Mr.
Barnes?” “I think you gave me a
jaywalking ticket.” Malloy laughed. He
never forgot a face. It would come to him. “What can I do for you?” “I’m doing a story on the
conference. I’ve heard you’re the top consultant in the field when it comes
to dealing with sophisticated techniques of disruption. I wondered if I could
interview you about how you plan to deal with the planned protests.” Malloy owned a firm in “Slide in,” he said and
reached over to open the passenger door. Barnes got in the car, and they
shook hands. The reporter shoved his sunglasses onto his forehead, revealing
intense green eyes and sharply angled eyebrows that formed a V similar to the
shape of his mouth and chin. He pulled a notebook and a miniature digital
recorder from his pocket. “Hope you don’t mind if I record this. It’s insurance, to make sure my quotes are right.” “No problem,” Malloy
said. “You can say anything you want about me, but just spell my name right.”
Since he’d left law enforcement and started his consulting company, Malloy
had become a pro at handling reporters. “You were at the press conference?” “Oh yeah,” Barnes said.
“Quite the arsenal! The Long Range Acoustic Devices you’ve got mounted on the
Humvees just blow my mind. Is it true those things
were used in “They’re considered nonlethal weapons. They can let out an earsplitting
screech that drowns out even the loudest demonstrators.” “If someone blasted one
hundred and fifty decibels in my ear, I’d stop chanting about peace and
justice.” “We’ll only use the
screamers to communicate with large crowds. We tested them the other day.
Good for four blocks at least.” “I’ve
read about the “Uh-huh,” the reporter
said, jotting down a few notes. “The anarchists will get the message, all
right.” “My guess is that we
won’t need the big artillery. It’s the little stuff that counts, like the
scooter patrols and mechanical barriers.” “I’ve heard you’ve got a
lot of high-tech stuff too.” “True,” Malloy said. “The
most effective way to control the crazies is with software, not hardware.” “How so?” “Let’s take a ride.”
Malloy turned the key in the ignition. As the car pulled away from the curb,
he got on the radio. “This is Nomad. Heading north on Broadway.” “Nomad?”
Barnes said after
Malloy had signed off. “I wander around a lot.
Keeping an eye on things. The crazies know I’m on the move, but they don’t
know where I am. Keeps them on edge.” He turned east, drove a short distance
on Park, then made his way back to Broadway. “Who are these ‘crazies,’
as you call them?” “When it comes to
anarchists, you never know who or what you’re dealing with. Back in “Given
their lack of organization, what exactly are you looking for?” “Hard
to describe,” Malloy said. “Pretty much the same stuff I did when I was on
the street. The crazies will split up into small groups. Pairs or singles. I
just look for patterns of behavior.” Malloy let out a low
whistle. “I’ve still got the scars to prove it. What a mess!” “What went wrong?” “The crazies targeted the
World Trade Organization. What they call the ‘power elite.’ I was a district
supervisor in charge of crowd control. We got caught with our pants around
our ankles. Ended up with a hundred thousand demonstrators pissed off at what
they said was an oppressive world trade system. There was looting, curfews,
cops and National Guard running around shooting rubber bullets or tear gas at
the nonviolent as well as violent protesters. The city ended up with an
international black eye and a pile of lawsuits. Some people said the police
overreacted. Others said they didn’t do enough. Go figure.” “As you said, a major mess.” Malloy nodded. “But the
Battle of Seattle was the turning point.” “In what way?” “The protesters learned
that marching down the street wasn’t enough to get attention. Only direct action worked. You had to break
things up, inconvenience people, disrupt the focus of the people in your
bull’s-eye.” “From what I’ve seen
around the city today, the power elite have come a long way since “Hundred percent,” Malloy
said. “I was in Philly for the GOP convention when the anarchists made us
look silly again. They’d raise hell, then run down
the streets with a bunch of overweight cops chasing them. Created chaos and
confusion. They stirred up the pot at the WTO conference in “You kept disruptions to a minimum, but there
were complaints about civil rights being violated.” “That’s part of the protest strategy. These
guys are sophisticated. It’s mostly a small group of hard-core instigators
that moves from city to city. They provoke authority hoping we’ll overreact.
Whoops!” Malloy pulled off to the side, double-parking
near a group of people carrying musical instruments, and barked into his
hand radio. “Nomad to MACC. Guerrilla musicians gathering
for an unpermitted march from Barnes scanned the sidewalk on both sides of
the street. “I don’t see anyone marching.” “They’re walking in two-by-twos now. Nothing
illegal about that. They’ll start coming together in a minute—no, wait, there
they go now.” The musicians were coalescing into larger
groups, stepping off the curb into the street to form a procession. But
before the parade began, police officers on bicycles and scooters swooped in
from both sides and began to make arrests. Barnes furiously
scribbled notes. “I’m impressed,” he
said. “That went off like clockwork.” “It should. That
little maneuver was the result of years of experience. We’re only dealing
with an in-between economic conference, but there are hundreds of guests and
protesters, so there’s the potential of big trouble. The crazies are always
trying to stay one step ahead of us.” “How do you tell the
real fanatics from people who simply want to protest?” “Pretty hard. We just
arrest anyone who’s a troublemaker and sort things out later.” He took a
ringing cell phone from its dashboard cradle and handed it to Barnes. “Check
this out.” The reporter read the
text on the phone’s message screen. “It says that the scooter goon squad is
wrapped around the guerrilla musicians. Telling people to avoid this
neighborhood. Calling for cameras. Medics and legal observers. Says to
blockade cops from arresting demonstrators harassing people in the Theater
District. Who’s this from?” “The crazies. The cops aren’t the only
ones who learned from “Don’t they know you can
read the same messages?” “Sure. But the
demonstrations are more spontaneous, so we’re always playing cat-and-mouse
games with each other. Intel is the
name of the game. They’re fast, but it comes down to numbers. We’ve got
thirty-seven thousand cops, a blimp, helicopters, video cameras and two
hundred of our guys have helmet video cameras connected to the security nerve
center.” “Can’t they monitor the
police scanners?” “We know that they do. Rapid response is the key. You know what they say
in a fight, a good big guy can beat a good little guy any day. On a level
playing field, we’re going to win.” Barnes handed the phone
to Malloy. “This appears to be for you.” The text printed on the
message screen had changed. GOOD MORNING, NOMAD. OR SHOULD
WE CALL YOU FRANK, MR. MALLOY? “Huh?” Malloy said. He
looked at the phone in his hand as if it had turned to a snake. “How the hell are they
doing this?” he said, turning to Barnes. The reporter shrugged and made some
notes. Malloy tried to clear the screen, but a new message came on. PLAY TIME. The screen went blank. Malloy snatched up the
radio and tried to call MACC, but the call wouldn’t go through. The cell
phone rang again. Malloy listened a few moments, and said, “I’ll get right on
it.” He turned to Barnes, his face pale. “That was MACC. They say that the
air conditioning broke down in the nerve center. The communications are
going haywire. No one knows where the squads are. Traffic lights have gone
red all over town.” They were approaching Malloy’s cruiser moved
slowly through the mob that surged around it. As they approached the old New
York Times Building, the huge video screen stopped showing a Disney character
and went black. “Hey, look at that,”
Barnes said, pointing at the screen. Big letters had
appeared in white, streaming across the ABC News Spectacular sign. GREETINGS, NEO
ANARCHI5TS, FELLOW TRAVELERS AND TOURISTS. WE HAVE SHUT DOWN THE OPPRESSIVE ARMIES OF THE POWER ELITE. THIS IS A SMALL
TASTE OF THE FUTURE. TODAY IT’S DOWN THE WORLD. CONVENE A SUMMIT CONFERENCE TO DISMANTLE THE FRAMEWORK OF GLOBALIZATION OR WE’LL DISMANTLE IT FOR YOU. HAVE A NICE DAY! A smiley face with
horns appeared, then a single word: LUCIFER. “Who the hell is Lucifer?” Malloy said, staring through
the windshield. “Beats me,” Barnes said. He
reached for the door handle. “Thanks for the ride. I’ve got to file a story.” Then the word
disappeared, and FRANK MALLOY appeared simultaneously on every sign of every
size on the square. Panasonic. LG.
NASDAQ. Malloy cursed and
scrambled out of the car. He scanned the milling crowd. Barnes had been
swallowed up among the thousands of protesters. He muttered the name
“Lucifer” and a chill ran up his spine. It came to him where he had seen the
reporter’s face. The pointed beard, the red hair and the V-angled brows and
mouth and the green eyes had subconsciously reminded him of renderings he had
seen of Satan. As Malloy stood there
wondering if had gone crazy, he was unaware that he was under the gaze of
those same jade eyes. Barnes had stepped into the doorway of an office
building where he could watch Malloy. He held a cell phone to his ear, and he
was laughing. “I just wanted you to
know that your plan went off like clockwork. The city is in total
breakdown.” “That’s great,” said the
voice on the other end of the line. “Look, we’ve got to talk. It’s
important.” “Not now. Come out to the
lighthouse, so I can thank you in person.” He tucked the phone in
his pocket and gazed out at Times Square. A young man had thrown a brick
through the front window of the Disney store. Others followed his example,
and within minutes the sidewalks were littered with broken glass. A car was
set on fire, sending black billowing smoke toward the heavens. The acrid
stench of burning plastic and fabric filled the air. A guerrilla band was
marching down the street, playing the theme from Bridge on the River Kwai. The music
could barely be heard over the cacophony of honking car horns. Barnes gazed at the scene
with a beatific smile on his satanic face. “Chaos,” he murmured like
a monk chanting his mantra. “Sweet, sweet chaos.” The villain in Polar
Shift wants to transform the world by reversing the magnetic poles. It
won’t surprise any reader to learn that Kurt Austin foils the plot and once
again, saves the world from disaster. Steve Hopkins,
December 22, 2005 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the January 2006
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Polar
Shift.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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