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Review by Alice Jackson Baughn
If you're going to the beach this summer, toss a copy of Extinct in your book bag. But be forewarned, you may not want to slip your feet beneath the surf after reading Charles Wilson's best scientific thriller yet.
Extinct opens on the serene banks of the Pascagoula River where children spend lazy summer days learning how to swim and hoping for a chance to go fishing with an adult out on the Gulf of Mexico.
But that serenity is short lived as a terrifying creature makes it way northward to drive death into coastal waters and just the right amount of fear into readers, keeping them from putting the book down until the final page.
Although the book's cover recalls the 1970s mega-hit Jaws, the similarity between the two stories stops there. Wilson has written a chilling scenario of an aquatic world thrown into overdrive by mankind's abuse, and he uses today's headlines to make his readers squirm beneath their suntan lotion.
Extinct's plot stems from various finds of prehistoric fish turning up in waters from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico. Wilson proposes that anything from underwater nuclear tests to increased earthquake activity could be upsetting the denizens of the world's deepest waters. And he leaves the reader wanting to know more about what really lies thousands of feet below on the ocean's floor and even deeper inside its unexplored crevices.
Like his previous books, Wilson spins his yarns with factual fiber after hours spent digging through research articles in university libraries and talking with specialists, some of whom he found through searches on the Internet, in a variety of scientific fields.
Readers of Wilson's four previous books will get a special lagniappe in this one. While the author's plotting has always been superb, his characterization and skillful character development in Extinct catapults him into a whole new writing dimension.
Extinct is summer reading at its best, but you will remember its story long after fall leaves turn golden.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.
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