In his latest, Masello lets loose a stable of thriller stereotypes and drives them hastily, but not unskillfully, through a sprawling adventure story complete with shady foreigners, ancient codes and terrible monsters. Sinister Iraqi zillionaire Mohammad Al-Kalli hires Beth Cox, a medieval manuscript expert, to translate and restore his family's thousand-year-old bestiary, a medieval compendium of mythical animals painstakingly copied out by monks, replete with Da Vinci Code-style hidden messages couched in dead languages. As it turns out, the creatures catalogued there-a mix of Jurassic Park-like prehistoric monsters-are all too real and held in Al-Kalli's secret menagerie, which Beth's paleontologist husband has been hired, also by Al-Kalli, to study.. Masello throws into the mix an Elmore Leonardesque lowlife who's trying to blackmail Al-Kalli, a 24-style terrorist plot to immolate Los Angeles, Tom Clancyesque weapons specs ("the Beretta... featured a delayed locking block system, which provided a faster cycle time and exceptional accuracy"), an eerily sleepless infant a la The Ring and a spooky original touch in the 9,000-year-old corpse dredged out of L.A.'s La Brea tar pits. Masello has a difficult time keeping together all these busy, dissonant subplots, but even if they don't mesh, each one is a well-wrought genre turn with colorful characters and punchy writing. The result is a diverting trip that may make you think twice before going back to the zoo. (Dec.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
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Bestiary
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Editorial Reviews
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940170818907 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Tantor Audio |
| Publication date: | 07/05/2016 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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