Socially awkward DCI Tracy Hanson is having a bad day.
It starts with a commercial flight crashing into the heart of London. She’s chased by out-of-control helicopters. A mysterious sniper is on the loose. Her boss is giving her grief. Her work colleagues are full of attitude. And now she has a new and distracting partner, jealous girlfriends, a boy who has been orphaned by the crash, and a two o’clock appointment at the IVF clinic.
Hanson hunts down the rogue sniper, but each clue forces her to face the truth behind her broken past, each revelation leading her toward the impossible. A net draws in around her, and the city turns on itself.
In the houses of power, politicians and the military twist the crumbling civilization to bolster their own agendas, oblivious to the destruction they are ushering in.
And that's before the aliens attack.
Quarter Finalist
Assessment:
Detective Chief Inspector Tracy Hanson’s investigation of a mysterious plane crash puts her in the crosshairs of enemies who have seemingly impossible control over the laws of science and know her next moves before she does. Lingane’s hard science fiction thriller also keeps the readers guessing by staying one step ahead of the expected, and builds an increasingly fast pace driven by likable and tenacious characters who refuse to accept the doom that seems to be descending over the world. Half nail-biter, half classic invasion tale, this series opener promises great things.
Date Submitted: July 03, 2016
Fault/lines receives a rave review from authoritative UK site, the Bookbag.
What starts off as a day that should be remembered for a medical appointment soon becomes anything but for DCI Tracey Hanson. When planes start falling from the sky she and DI Reggie Chambers are thrown together in the thick of it. In the midst of the carnage, a teenager is orphaned. Definitely a tragic event but is there more to it than that?
After a short hiatus from adult fiction while he created his award winning Tesla series, Aussie author Mark Lingane is back.. Boy is he back!
In this the first Hadron Damnation book (nattily marketed as Hadron Damnation 0, the prequel) he demonstrates how sci-fi is often about reflecting the fears of the present and projecting them onto a larger, borderless canvass. In this case the tragically tourist-darkened 21st century is taken a step further as aircraft randomly fall globally and equally random (or seemingly so) top brass die in peculiar circumstances.
Our heroes are definitely Hanson and Chambers. They have the magnetism, they have the banter but whether they'll get it on or not becomes less and less important (even to them) as world events take over. Indeed the fear factor that was modified slightly for the younger Tesla audience is here and upgraded in all its gory (very gory).
There are some heart stopping moments and unforgettable set pieces as the scenes shift in time with our tachycardic pulses and gradually the significance of what's going on is revealed. (Talking about revelation, a plea to all book-blurb writers (normally not the authors themselves): please don’t give so much away in the blurb. There'd be some stonking shocks if only etc… As it is there are still some whopping surprises but there are also the opportunities for more.)
Again, as in Tesla, there's a physics base to the sci-fi that's explained by science geek Randeep in an understandable, ungeeky way. (I understood and I only managed Grade 3 CSE physics.) He's also the sort of science geek we can all empathise with: the sort who'd never go full pelt into danger. However if a scientific carrot is dangled before him, he's off and running.
As with a lot of sci-fi there comes a stage in the novel where we're invited to suspend disbelief and go with the action. For those of us who do it's definitely rewarding with some of the rewards being deferred. E.g. what part has teenager Cally got in all this? Oh and Mark? Yes, it was most definitely a shame about the child!
