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Abominable snowwoman Esau is a literate thriller with a token heroine by JULIET WATERS
Philip Kerr is something of a mythical creature among writers. Few novelists can claim a career that includes rave reviews from Salman Rushdie, a film option contract with Disney and comparison by The Financial Times to Michael Crichton. But style-wise, Kerr easily defeats Crichton. After reading Esau, a more appropriate comparison might be with the original king of bestsellers, Edgar Rice Burroughs. Kerr has an instinct for what propels a classic pulp novel: elite heroes, sci-fi philosophy that grapples with both the future and the origin of humanity, a quest for the mythical Yeti, creature of Tibetan lore, more commonly known as the abominable snowman, and a memorable female character who doesn't take up too much space in the plot. It's a bonus for Disney that all the major characters in Esau are American. I suspect, however, that Kerr didn't cast his novel to lure film money--my theory is that a character like Stella Swift is only imaginable in the U.S. As anyone who's spent some time in British academia will tell you, it's an institution about one step ahead of the Catholic Church when it comes to high-level jobs for women. Swift, a tenure track paleoanthropologist who likes to go by her last name, is a thoroughly British fantasy of North American female academics. She's so independent she can't even be bothered to return the phone calls of her world-class mountain climber boyfriend for three days, even after he's brought her a skull that will skyrocket her career. It's hard to deny that Kerr has a great scenario here. There's sex, violence, cannibalism, a potential nuclear war between India and Pakistan, spies, an avalanche or two, slippery drops, cool scientific and evolutionary discoveries, the latest advances in cyber communication and high-tech mountain gear that is the stuff of Canadian fantasies. Which brings me to another reason why I don't often review thrillers. In fairness to the reader, you can't reveal too much about the plot. But I can say that while Esau is being hyped as the next Jurassic Park. And while the peaks of Tibet may be a little chilly yet for spring reading, it's a going to be a great book for summer. Esau by Philip Kerr, Doubleday, 416 pp., hc, $29.95 |
I usually avoid thrillers because they are probably the hardest popular genre to write well. Thrillers crave action and a high level of dramatic tension that doesn't tend to combine well with the slower-paced demands of literature. But even if you don't agree with T.H. Huxley that "the great end of life is not knowledge but action," there are days when something within you longs for a book that will make your mind sweat a bit. Esau definitely answers that need.