Review: What a Disastrous Deal! (Tongue Firmly In Cheek)
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 9, 2014
Natural disasters make a great theme for a thriller, and this collection has six novels based on this theme! So for a pittance, you can get some outstanding reading lined up for your summer vacation.I've read two of the novels in this collection, so I suspect the other four will be of equal caliber. Toni Dwiggins' "Volcano Watch" rides on the valid geological premise "there is no such thing as an extinct volcano". The magma chamber may be too deep or too cool to concern us on the surface, the pressure may be adequately relieved by vents elsewhere in a field, but if a volcano has erupted once, there is always a potential for it to erupt again. Toni Dwiggins takes the "extinct" volcano that formed the crater in which Mammoth Lake, CA, is located, and spins it into a threat to the hometown of Cassie Oldfield and Walter Shaw, forensic geologists. (We met them in Dwiggins' previous novels, "Badwater" and "Quicksilver".)It isn't only the volcano that is heating up - tensions within the town threaten to derail sensible efforts to evacuate or combat the potential for eruption. If you've ever lived in a small town with one or two industries (especially seasonal industries), the political infighting in this novel will ring true!Once again, in "Volcano Watch" Dwiggins has provided an intensely satisfying thriller that combines a human and a geologic threat with edge-of-the-seat pacing. The level of scientific explanation was just right for me, while the way she incorporated volcanic precursors and eruptive action was realistic.What in the world could come next for Cassie and Walter? I can't wait!The other novel I've read before this collection is Phoebe Sullivan's Sector C, an "Outbreak"-like thriller starring a vetrinarian who is unwittingly on the track of an infection that disturbs horses, but kills humans. Based on that, plus the reviews of collected novels that others have read, I will hope to get far more than $1-worth of enjoyment from this collection.