Shadow Zone

✍ Scribed by Iris Johansen; Roy Johansen

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 201 KB
• Edition: 1st ed
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN: 0312611633

✦ Synopsis

From Publishers Weekly

This disappointing sequel to the Johansens' Silent Thunder (2008) centers on the ancient city of Marinth, submerged in a massive tsunami 4,000 years ago and lying a quarter mile beneath the Atlantic Ocean. The secret that doomed Marinth's civilization to decline before the killer wave is still present and could in the wrong hands be a threat to hundreds of millions of people. As malevolent armsmerchant Vincent Gadiare and his femme-fatale lover, Anna Devareau, maneuver to get their hands on Marinth's secret, Hannah Bryson, world-class submarine designer, gathers her own legion of experts, including her love interest, enigmatic assassin Nicholas Kirov. Entertaining action scenes compensate in part for two-dimensional characters and trite romances. Informed readers may have trouble with the book's lack of verisimilitude. Submarines behave suspiciously similar to aircraft, and photosynthetic plants thrive in the water well below the photic zone.
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From Booklist

A lost underwater civilization, deadly algae, and hordes of attack dolphins roil the seas and threaten a fragile peace in the latest international thriller from the Johansens, a tale that reunites characters from their best-selling Silent Thunder (2009). As Hannah Bryson concludes her research at the deep-sea archaeological site of the doomed colony of Marinth, scientists are on the brink of discovering what caused Marinth's downfall. The answer may lie in the panels of an intricate trellis that Hannah manages to bring to the surface, only to have it fall into the hands of Gadaire, a ruthless sociopath who wants to use it to bring about an environmental Armageddon. Only one person has the cunning and desire to stop Gadaire: Kirov, the Russian agent who came to Hannah's aid once before. While Hannah struggles with the spy-who-loved-me aspects of working closely with the inscrutable Kirov, her impetuous 12-year-old nephew, Ronnie, insinuates himself into the middle of the investigation. In this adrenalin-accelerating tale of a high-stakes, high-seas conspiracy, the Johansens adeptly juggle multiple points of intrigue, smoothly balancing the prerequisite whirlwind pacing with plausible, even restrained, personal relationships. And Hannah emerges as a prepossessing, determined heroine who is more than capable of sustaining this absorbing series. --Carol Haggas