"Child’s latest is a beautifully crafted scare-fest….Here’s hoping for a sequel."
PEOPLE (1/13/03)

“A sensational piece of popular entertainment. If you are looking for intelligent fun, it doesn’t get much better than this.”
The Washington Post (12/16/02)

"The blend of technological jargon and suspense results in a real thrill-a-minute read."
Booklist

"In this ultra-entertaining new novel, Lincoln Child weaves fascinatingly plausible technologies and a frighteningly believable tale.It’s Brave New World meets Jurassic Park."
Dan Brown, bestselling author of The Da Vinci Code

A Review from the Washington Post:

The Wonderful World of Danger: 'Utopia' by Lincoln Child

By Patrick Anderson,
who reviews thrillers on Mondays in 'Style'

Monday, December 16, 2002

Lincoln Child's terrific new thriller unfolds in the world's grandest theme park, Utopia, a make-believe universe that stretches out beneath a vast golden dome in the desert north of Las Vegas. Every day more than 65,000 men, women and children pay "seventy-five dollars a head, all ages, no discounts" to taste of Utopia's wonders. A gleaming monorail carries them into the pleasure dome, where they choose among four Worlds: Camelot (the Middle Ages), Gaslight (Victorian England), Boardwalk (America circa 1900) or Callisto (a 24th-century spaceport). Each World features state-of-the-art rides, fireworks, light shows, amazing robots and holograms, even a gambling casino.

Here is Utopia seen from above: "Spreading out from it, like the sections of a halved grapefruit, were the Worlds themselves: each a riot of color and shape, each utterly different from the others. Callisto, the futuristic spaceport, had from this height the kind of dark, burnished sheen of a black-light photograph; Gaslight lay enshrouded in veils of fog; Boardwalk was all brilliant light and bright pastel shades. People were everywhere: walking along the boulevards and sidewalks, waiting in lines . . . eating, drinking, laughing, shouting."

Needless to say, this earthly paradise will soon face destruction.

Andrew Warne is summoned to Utopia because the futuristic robots he designed for the park are malfunctioning. He doesn't believe that is possible -- then, one of his robots, after making a root-beer float for his 14-year-old daughter, attacks him. Far worse soon happens. An exceedingly lethal gang of criminals, led by a nasty Brit who calls himself John Doe (think Alan Rickman in his "Die Hard" mode), has penetrated Utopia. They are after tens of millions of dollars in cash from the casinos, and to win that jackpot they are quite willing to use explosives to bring Utopia's dome crashing down on 65,000 more or less innocent souls.

Decent widower Warne (think Tom Hanks) joins with Utopia's manager, his onetime lover Sarah Boatwright, to foil the terrorists. Warne's daughter Georgia, who loathes Sarah and is partial to Fats Waller and Count Basie, is soon menaced by the terrorists. One of Warne's allies is a robotic dog called Wingnut, who will surely delight the young when "Utopia" is filmed (think R2-D2 and Spielberg). The good guys can't call for the cavalry lest the terrorists make good their threat to bring down the dome. When there are fights and shootouts, the paying customers cheer, thinking it's all part of the show. Cliffhanger follows cliffhanger as the story rumbles toward its explosive ending.

As far as plot, action and suspense are concerned, "Utopia" could hardly be improved upon, but that is only the first of Child's achievements. His characters are first-rate, as is his writing. The real icing on the cake is Utopia itself, ingeniously conceived and lovingly described, from its Jack the Ripper T-shirts to the womblike sound effects it uses "to foster a subliminal sense of tranquility" to Boardwalk's "faintest touch of horse manure in the air, oddly pleasant in this context" to the glittering spaceport "sixty miles above Jupiter's sixth moon."

Waiting in line for a ride, Warne and his daughter look into a mirror and are shocked to see him 200 pounds heavier and her 20 years older. After a moment, Warne gets it: advanced holographic technology. A camera has scanned them, then used morphing software to alter their images, "like the wavy mirrors in a fun house, only light-years more advanced."

Child has created a fictional wonderland that is both high-tech and nostalgic, and "Utopia" is a sensational piece of popular entertainment. If you are looking for intelligent fun, it doesn't get much better than this.

Having said all that, I hesitate to accuse the author of harboring serious intent, but there is one level at which he may be guilty of such mischief. The creative genius behind Utopia was a magician named Eric Nightingale (think Disney) who made a fortune in television and then set out to fulfill his personal vision: "He wanted to create virtual worlds complete in every detail; past worlds, future worlds, that would instruct visitors as they entertained. Worlds that relied on immersiveness, not rides, to delight guests." But Nightingale died in a plane crash six months before the park opened (think murder) and the corporate bean-counters quickly took over, bringing with them exit polls and demographic studies, and adding the cheap-thrill rides and merchandising tie-ins and bustling casinos that Nightingale would have hated.

In this sense, if I read it correctly, "Utopia" is the story of a dream corrupted by greed.

Think America.


© 2002 The Washington Post Company