When a 25-year-old wine-making commune of ex-hippies in California is threatened by a planned hydroelectric dam, its charismatic leader Ricky “Priest” Granger concocts a plot to steal a seismic vibrator, along with detailed seismological data, in order to threaten the Governor of California with a cataclysmic earthquake. Only crack FBI agent Judy Maddox, a half-Vietnamese agent in her mid 30s, has the intellect and intuition to counter the threat posed by the eco-terrorist group that calls itself The Hammer of Eden.

Title       

The Hammer of Eden

Author        

Ken Follett

Year        

April 1999

Publisher        

Fawcett Books (The Ballantine Publishing Group in the US)

Reading date        

December 2007

Genre        

Suspense / detective

Plot

When a 25-year-old wine-making commune of ex-hippies in California is threatened by a planned hydroelectric dam, its charismatic leader Ricky “Priest” Granger concocts a plot to steal a seismic vibrator, along with detailed seismological data, in order to threaten the Governor of California with a cataclysmic earthquake. Only crack FBI agent Judy Maddox, a half-Vietnamese agent in her mid 30s, has the intellect and intuition to counter the threat posed by the eco-terrorist group that calls itself The Hammer of Eden.

Characters

The Hammer of Eden has a cracking plot – driven by the parallel stories of Priest and Judy – but the characters are weaker than a cup of watered-down Millers draft. Priest starts out as a compelling character, but a clumsy chimera of self-conscious charisma and the superficial secondary characters make him leak interest as the story develops.  Judy starts out as an exotic all-American girl and, perhaps because of her juvenile infatuation with Quercus, fails to evolve at all. It’s as if these characters were created for the screen and are waiting for actors to breathe life into them. The shallowness of Priest and Judy undermined my enjoyment of this entertaining yarn because they were so tediously predictable.

Theme

Family values win out over fringe extremism as Judy draws on her family (he`r dad Bo is a San Francisco detective) and friends (putative lover Michael Quercus) to solve the mystery while Priest becomes increasingly isolated in his monomaniacal battle of wits with the State of Government..

Recommend

It is okay as an airport read, but lacks the intellectual depth and characterisation to make it a satisfying read.

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