The Passage, by Justin Cronin (Ballantine Books; $27)

What must it feel like to receive a contract for $3.75 million for three books, only one of which you’ve written, plus an additional $1.75 million for the film rights? According to Publisher’s Weekly, that’s the enviable position of Justin Cronin, English professor at Rice University, whose The Passage, its publisher hopes, may be the blockbuster novel of the summer. 

I must confess that knowing that the publisher paid an advance this huge biased me against the book from the get-go. Particularly since the book is about vampires. After all, I have vowed to never read, much less review, another vampire book.

But the vampires in this book are different. No urbane, sexy, dreamy-eyed undead here: instead, these vampires—called “virals”—are killing machines, soulless beings that resulted from a science experiment gone horribly wrong.

The start of the book was confusing, but the set up is this: four terminal cancer patients on an ecotour in the jungle contract a mystery virus that cures them. The scientists studying them learned that something in the virus had reset their thymus glands. Physically, they were as fit as teenagers. Although the patients eventually died, the main scientist figures this virus promises to be the ultimate prize: a way to cure everything. But before it can be put into general use, he needs to test it on human subjects. So of course he turns to killers on death row. (Okay, is there ANY doubt that this will end badly?!) Just to mix things up, he also selects a 6-year-old abandoned girl named Amy. The subjects are kept in a Colorado lab. Where, naturally, something goes horribly, terribly wrong—and the infected subjects escape, wreaking havoc throughout the land.

Flash forward umpteen years. The original subjects infected people, who infected others, and now some 42 million virals roam the earth. (In the good news, however, apparently that "staying young" part of the virus actually worked, since they only die if they’re shot or skewered in a specific spot on their chests.) The few remaining humans live in a highly organized colony. They keep out the virals by burning floodlights all night, since the virals can’t take the light. But in a really neat twist, the batteries are starting to run out and they need to find more. The members of the colony, located in the country that used to be known as California, don’t know if there are other human colonies elsewhere, or if they can reach an outpost to find what they need without being slaughtered when the sun goes down. 

But remember Amy? She shows up at the colony and there’s something. . .not quite right about her. For instance, there’s a radio transmitter embedded in her neck that broadcasts a signal that indicates that she needs to go to Colorado. So a band of survivors decide to walk there. They pass through Las Vegas, hit the casinos (actually, they do, in a very visual scene quite obviously written for its cinematic appeal) and hunker down wherever they find a safe spot.  And some 770 pages later, the book ends with a bang.

But now, the true test. Was it worth the incredible sum that  the publisher paid? Yes and no. The core story is pretty imaginative. The post-apocalyptic society thing was very creative, chilling, and believable. However, Cronin takes far too long to set up each stage of the story—sometimes over a hundred pages or so. Far too many sections are written without a word of dialogue or action, and it just gets boring. The voyage to Colorado and back to California, in particular, drag on about as long as it would have taken to bike the route. Had the book been 350 pages long? It would have been terrific.

Storm Prey, by John Sandford (Putnam; $27.95)

Those of you who have read my column for the past 20 years know that John Sandford is one of my most favorite authors. I can't remember ever reading a bad Prey book. It's possible that some are better than others; however, because each of them is so much better than 95 percent of the mysteries being published, they all shine. His latest is no exception: in fact, one fellow Sandford fan told me she thinks it is his best yet, and I'm not about to argue with her.

Three of the most hapless crooks you've ever met rob a hospital pharmacy with the help of a cocaine-addicted doctor. The pharmacy worker goes for his cell phone, and one of the bad guys kicks him. Unfortunately, the older guy takes Coumadin, a blood thinner, and by the time he gets to the ER, he's a goner. He managed to scratch one of the thieves so the cops can use the skin (i.e.DNA) found under his fingernails to identify the guy he scratched. 

Normally, the robbery would be a case for the Minneapolis cops. But a surgeon at the hospital got a look at the bad guys as they drove out of the parking lot after pulling the job. The surgeon, Weather Karkinnen, as Sandford fans know, is married to Lucas Davenport of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which means that Lucas and his merry band take over the case. Weather is part of a team of surgeons working to separate conjoined twins. Lucas makes sure she's protected, usually by Virgil Flowers, who has lately starred in his own Sandford series.

Kicking the pharmacist was only the first of many stupid mistakes the robbers make, each of which gets them deeper in trouble. "'The whole problem was, we're stupid people,'" one of the bad guys tells Lucas. "'That's what caused all this trouble. . .We sure as shit weren't smart enough to pull off a big-time robbery. . . I'm stupid. I know that. Everybody knows that.'"

As always, Sandford blends perfect plotting with memorable characters and enough cop banter to make me crack a smile more than once. The only thing I dislike about reading one of his Prey mysteries is that they go by too fast, and I have to wait a whole year for the next. So is Storm Prey the best of the best? It may well be.

The Whole World, by Emily Winslow (Random House; $25)

So these two American college students, Polly and Liv, meet up at Cambridge. Both have family issues: Polly is just starting to recover from the ghastly incident that landed her father in jail. Liv's father, meanwhile, lost his $4 million fortune when the dot-com bubble burst and she can't quite afford the place. She takes a job sorting old photos for Professor Gretchen Paul, who is writing a biography of her novelist mother, but is going blind.

Both Polly and Liv fall for Nick, a graduate student in paleobiology. "He's so cute!" Liv shrieks. "Do you think he likes me?" Actually, he chooses Polly, but when he kisses her, she throws up. Not, apparently, from his lack of kissing skill, but because being with him reminds her of her family tragedy. Nick, the cad, nurses his hurt ego by hooking up with Liv instead, but then is obvious about wanting to have nothing more to do with her.

Then Nick disappears.

So who did it? Polly's mother, who shows up in Cambridge and starts stalking her daughter's friends, warning them of Polly's past? Liv, who flies into a jealous rage when she learns on the news that Nick had been with Polly before their tryst?

Or is the actual mystery in this book not related to Nick at all?

Winslow's writing is fine, and she manages to sustain a level of hysteria that makes The Whole World read as if it were written by a Brit, rather than by an American living in Cambridge, which she currently is. My main complaint is that the mystery started down one path and then verged onto another. The misdirection made it seem like Winslow had started one mystery and then changed her mind. The book would have been stronger had she kept to one or the other. That being said, she shows great promise as a writer.

Stieg Larsson's Trilogy

I am happy to report that I am finally done with Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who trilogy. (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest; Knopf.) I reviewed Dragon Tattoo in 2008, and said at the time, "The story has everything: a great setting, very human characters, and a plot that becomes more intriguing with every turn of the page." I actually was surprised that the book became such a runaway best seller. It was a solid mystery, but nothing about it seemed destined to move it to the stratosphere.

But I saw the movie earlier this year, and really liked it. There were details in the movie that I hadn't remembered from the first book, so I decided to read the next book to see if those details were explained. Once I was done, I figured I may as well finish the trilogy. This review focuses on the second and third books.

Dragon Tattoo was a tidy little classic "locked room" mystery (though the "room" was actually a remote Swedish island cut off by a closed bridge.) Played with Fire and Hornet's Nest are actually one overly long political thriller separated into two books. Unfortunately, the quality of Larsson's writing decreases with each book. By the time I was about half way through Hornet's Nest, I had to force myself to concentrate. The books moved too slowly, and were filled with long passages that did nothing to further the plot. I defy anyone to find sentences like this interesting: "He got into his Volvo and drove towards the city but turned off to go across Stora Essingen and Grondal into Sodermalm. He drove down Hornsgatan and across to Bellmansgatan via Brannkyrkagatan. He turned left onto Tavastgatan at the Bishop's Arms pub and parked at the corner." And it's not the Swedish street names: substitute Rockville Pike or Main Street and the passage is just as boring. 

The two books concentrate on computer hacker Lisbeth Salander, the young woman referred to in the titles of the three books. (Spoiler alert: if you haven't read either of the first two books, you should probably skip the rest of this paragraph.) Mikael Blomkvist's magazine is about to run an expose on a sex trafficking scandal involving some highly placed Swedish officials when someone murders the reporters working on the story. Lisbeth's fingerprints are on the gun, which belongs to the perverted creep of a lawyer who had been appointed as her guardian years ago. The lawyer is also dead, and all signs point to Salander as a triple murderer.  There are lots of story lines, but the main one is that the Swedish security police have been committing some heinous crimes in their attempts to protect a really sicko Russian defector. The defector turns out to have played a role in Salander's past.

With better editing, the books could have been stronger. The final third of Hornet's Nest is actually quite compelling, but it takes too long to get there.  It is also absurdly over the top when it comes to violence. Once character is shot in the brain but makes a full recovery, and another tries to commit suicide by shooting himself in the face, but does not die. One character is impervious to pain, and when his feet are nailed to a floor with a nail gun, his biggest problem is losing his balance. The violence, particularly that which is perpetrated by men against women, is pretty gratuitous.

It seems that most everyone I know is reading one of Larsson's books right now. Of all the books I've ever reviewed, I think there may have only been one that I knew, absolutely knew, would be a blockbuster, and that was Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park. Certainly, if anyone had ever asked me if I thought The Girl Who series would be crazy popular I would have said it was doubtful. Too bad Larsson died before he could see how the rest of the world (everyone besides me, that is!)  is enjoying his books.