Saturday, May 28, 2016

Whodunit?: Jack Batten reviews


And Dan Bloom's review
 
The author of this page-turner of a cli-fi mystery thriller has said in interviews that she "was motivated to write the book when I listened to a famous climate scientist describe the tactics climate change doubters used to harass him.'' That got me hooked right away: a novel with a conscience. Entertainment, but also food for thought. The author  is a marine ecologist who has written a cli-fi that makes her scientific specialty exciting and almost understandable to a science-challenged reader like me. The central character and narrator is a Maine oceanographer who thinks there’s something fishy about the death of a colleague on board a research ship. She wades through much technical material to find a solution and, along the way, gives a good cuffing to idiots who deny climate change science. ''Cold Blood, Hot Sea''  is one of America's first 'cli-fi' amateur sleuth mysteries, and it's the first volume in a series. The blurbs are already in and from Bill McKibben to  Joeann Hart, the praise is worth hoisting up on the mainsail of any sailing yacht navitating the New England waters, from the Gulf of Maine to Cape Cod Bay.
I read it and I'm still reeling.
Sure, words like "fast-paced murder mystery" and "cli-fi page turner" and the one I like best -- "Paddlers will love this book's hero -- an oceanographer who uses her kayak to thwart climate change deniers." -- goes right to the heart of the matter. This is not just escapist reading for a weekend at beach this summer along the shores of the Maine coast or Martha's Vineyard or the Jersey shore, and it's not just a well-written, well-paced, chapter-by-chapter entertainment that will make the summer of 2016 a great time to read the paperback on an airplane, a ferry or a yacht (and the beaches of Maine and New Hampshire) ...but it's really also a very good yarn that puts denialists and their online armies of post COP21 head-in-the-sand deniers on notice that climate denialism has no place at the table anymore.
Debate over. Read this book! An entertaining debut 'cli-fi' mystery novel set in today's Maine and with an agenda: putting climate denialists in their place


***"Curious, empathetic, compassionate: What we should be as human beings."***

AND....

Whodunit?: Jack Batten reviews a debut mystery novel... 


 
 
A cli-fi mystery thriller By Charlene D’Avanzo
from Torrey House, 270 pages, $14.95

Charlene D’Avanzo is a marine ecologist who has written a debut cli-fi crime novel that makes her scientific specialty exciting and almost understandable to the science-challenged reader. The central character and narrator, Mara Tusconi, is a Maine oceanographer who thinks there’s something fishy (pardon the pun) about the death of a colleague on board a research ship. She wades through much technical material to find a solution and, along the way, gives a good cuffing to rightwing climate denialists idiots who deny climate change science.
 
 
 

Jack Batten’s Whodunit column appears every other Saturday in CANADA.
 

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