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Darwin's Blade
by
Dan Simmons
A series of high-speed fatal car wrecks -- accidents that seem. as if they may have been staged -- is leading Darwin Minor down a dangerous road. A reluctant expert on violent ways to die, he sifts clues from wreckage the way a brilliant coroner extracts damning information from a victim's corpse. But the deeper he digs, the more enemies he seems to make, and the wider the...more
Mass Market Paperback, 464 pages
Published
October 1st 2001
by HarperTorch
(first published 2000)
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Accident reconstructor Darwin Minor gets into an accident himself. It turns out people are gunning for him. But why? With the help of beautiful FBI agent, Sydney Olson, he's going to find out...
Dan Simmons is one of the more versatile writers active today. He can write in any genre, from science fiction with Hyperion, to horror with Carrion Comfort, to crime with Hardcase, to this, a thriller.
The Good:
Darwin Minor reconstructs car accidents, trying to prevent insurance fraud. It's a pretty good...more
Dan Simmons is one of the more versatile writers active today. He can write in any genre, from science fiction with Hyperion, to horror with Carrion Comfort, to crime with Hardcase, to this, a thriller.
The Good:
Darwin Minor reconstructs car accidents, trying to prevent insurance fraud. It's a pretty good...more
Aug 28, 2010
Victoria
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
books-in-a-series,
mystery-thriller
Ehh... this third loose off-shoot of Summer of Night was less impressive than I would have hoped. While Simmons is certainly a versatile writer, this shoot-'em-up semi-comedic thriller seemed a bit forced. Many of the same accidents were included not only in the compilation of the Darwin Awards, but brought to life on screen as well in that Darwin Awards movie. If less clichéd selections had been chosen, this would have been a much more interesting twist. The attempts at humour were about half s...more
Just finished and enjoyed it. I'm glad that I've read so much GREAT Simmons work before it so that reading this I could really tell that the author was winking at the reader the entire time and you were certain it was not to be taken seriously; otherwise, it would have been hard to resist constantly thinking "Is this guy f%*&ing serious? I mean COME ON", but then, it's SO tongue in cheek that even without it I'm not sure I would have kept from laughing. One thing that stood out to me from ea...more
"Stupidity kills. Absolute stupidity kills absolutely." [Dan] Simmons, who has moved effortlessly from horror (Children of the Night) to science fiction (Hyperion; Endymion) to thrillers (The Crook Factory) obviously had a lot of fun writing this gripping suspense thriller about automobile insurance fraud rackets in Southern California. Former NTSB investigator Dr. Darwin Minor (Ph.D., physics) is the best at what he does. As the country's leading "accident reconstruction specialist," Darwin has...more
Uno dei pi�� brutti libri che abbia mai letto, terminarne la lettura �� stato uno sforzo notevole. Siamo sicuri che sia stato scritto da Simmons, lo stesso Simmons di Hyperion? Prosa scadente. Personaggi senza spessore, banali. Lui ricco bello intelligente, tiratore espertissimo ex marine, in Vietnam ha fatto fuori quintillioni di Vietnamiti. Chiss�� come mai hanno perso la guerra, se erano tutti come lui. Lei ... no comment. Razzismo strisciante, ogni non americano �� descritto secondo i pi�� b...more
После Гипериона Дэну можно простить что угодно. Но читать это совсем не обязательно.
Собственно я даже сомневаюсь сам ли он это писал - английский чрезвычайно простой, единственное незнакомое слово - термин для подстав на дорогах, но его и в словарях нет.
Начало книги, кстати, захватывает - интересно и забавно.
Потом какое-то нагромождение фактов (детальных и примитивно-скучных) про все что угодно - оружие, машины, планеры, приемы снайперов - но очень нудно поданное.
И очень невнятные взаимоотно...more
Собственно я даже сомневаюсь сам ли он это писал - английский чрезвычайно простой, единственное незнакомое слово - термин для подстав на дорогах, но его и в словарях нет.
Начало книги, кстати, захватывает - интересно и забавно.
Потом какое-то нагромождение фактов (детальных и примитивно-скучных) про все что угодно - оружие, машины, планеры, приемы снайперов - но очень нудно поданное.
И очень невнятные взаимоотно...more
It's like he lost a bet. I picture Dan Simmons sitting around with his literary friends and they goad him into writing an action thriller based on tired email forwards that we all saw too many times back in the early nineties. They force him to incorporate an incredibly cliched love story. It has to incorporate a misunderstood protagonist nursing the wounds of a recent tragedy, a car chase ending with a supercar driving off a cliff, and Russian spies; so it must have been a high stakes loss. In...more
Simmons character Dar Minor is an accident reconstructionist that ends up on a hit list due to work that he has done reconstructing an accident that proves to be murder. This is a very good book that does go a bit over the top with some of the details in the reconstruction area. This may seem a bit difficult to read, yet Simmons manages to make it understandable to some degree so that the reader is still able to enjoy the book. A lot of fascinating cases that Dar Minor covers are actually true e...more
Everyone knows I love Dan Simmons.
And days after I told a friend that everything Dan writes is brilliant, I started this novel.
I have to retract my statement to my friend. Sometimes, what Dan Simmons publishes is just okay.
There's a lot of cool sequences in this book: the utterly incredible highway car chase in the first fifty pages, the helicopter chase toward the ending, the clever way the Russian's escape from their FBI-surrounded home, the climactic knife battle on a log over a ravine. Shar...more
And days after I told a friend that everything Dan writes is brilliant, I started this novel.
I have to retract my statement to my friend. Sometimes, what Dan Simmons publishes is just okay.
There's a lot of cool sequences in this book: the utterly incredible highway car chase in the first fifty pages, the helicopter chase toward the ending, the clever way the Russian's escape from their FBI-surrounded home, the climactic knife battle on a log over a ravine. Shar...more
Dan Simmons has won numerous awards in several genres. This book is perhaps a bit unusual: the detective as accident investigator. Dr. Darwin Minor, Ph.D. in physics and ex- Marine sniper in Vietnam, reconstructs accidents, and it seems the Los Angeles area has been hit by numerous insurance frauds. Destitute Mexican immigrants are hired to become involved in an accident. They then receive the services of lawyers and doctors to beat the insurance companies out of millions. Darwin (Dar to his fri...more
This was a really fun read. I heard about it from the Sunday strip of 'Unshelved'. It's about Darwin, an accident reconstructionist with a PHD in Physics, who works for a PI firm that specializes in insurance fraud in California. He's a little too good at his job and he soon has all sorts of weapons aimed at his person. Because of this he has to brush up on his old Vietnam skills and marry them with his physics to keep alive and catch the bad guys. They actually work out physics problems on the...more
Even when Dan Simmons is "slumming," it's a decent read. The main issue is that the interesting accident reconstruction stuff gives way to a conspiracy thriller. The actual conspiracy/crime stuff isn't bad -- the part that's questionable is when Simmons makes main character Darwin Minor a Rambo-like super-awesome dude. Not only did he graduate college early and is a badass accident reconstruction specialist, but he's also a top-tier elite marksman? A bit too much "this guy is awesome" for my tas...more
This is a pretty good mystery novel that gets kinda bogged down towards the end with sniper fights. It's good and all, and it's well written and has some good Darwin Award references while still having a story that's fairly interesting, but the end wasn't my favorite thing ever. Sure, it was still good, but... I don't know, not my favorite by Simmons.
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really cool is one chapter that is written as a flash back that could be an entire book or film on its own about an incredible mission in Vietnam to evacuate radioactive materials from a South Vietnamese reactor that the Americans had overlooked while evacuating the country towards the end of the War.
It was interesting, it was well-written, but there didn't seem to be much of an overarching plotline. Maybe it's just me, but it felt like it was so focused on the minutiae of the story that it forgot the original story. I have to say, I felt like I was slogging through the book rather than reading it.
Simmons, Dan – Darwin’s Blade – G
Former NTSB investigator Dr. Darwin Minor (Ph.D., physics) is the best at what he does. As the country's leading "accident reconstruction specialist," Darwin has saved the insurance industry millions, as well as solving the most confounding cases of vehicular stupidity. But suddenly, he finds himself the target of assassins, resulting in a wild car chase that is only the first of many spellbinding set pieces. Is Darwin being targeted for business reasons, or is t...more
Former NTSB investigator Dr. Darwin Minor (Ph.D., physics) is the best at what he does. As the country's leading "accident reconstruction specialist," Darwin has saved the insurance industry millions, as well as solving the most confounding cases of vehicular stupidity. But suddenly, he finds himself the target of assassins, resulting in a wild car chase that is only the first of many spellbinding set pieces. Is Darwin being targeted for business reasons, or is t...more
A surprising departure for Dan Simmons from the niche he dominates as a leading Sci-fi and horror fiction writer. He tests his hands at writing a supsense thriller and injects fresh ideas into a tired old genre. However, I am afraid it won't go down well with the usual fans of thriler genre, as the mix of high science might be a bit overwhelming for some, whereas the people who are more likely to appreciate the intricacies of the book are likely to bypass it. Great pity, as it is very interestin...more
This is a fun read. Darwin Minor is a Ph D in physics whose specialty is reconstructing accidents to determine the cause. Of course, it developes that some of these accidents are crimes and Darwin will help solve them. I'm looking forward to reading the next in the series.
Like many books I've been reading lately, this one seemed quite good in the beginning, started getting boring and repititious in the middle and fell completely flat and predictable at the end. I did enjoy it's humour and wit though, gruesome as it sometimes was.
Cliched stereotypical characters that just can't be taken seriously tend to spoil the book along with superficial faux-philosophical digressions. And the romantic dialogue is as vomit-inducing as you'll ever get. Hard to say whether the author is still in the pubescent hormonal fantasy stage or just believes his readers are.
Liked this a lot. The combination of humor (bad quotes from the insurance world, chicken cannon, the chapter titles reference Sue Grafton's A is for..., B is for..., etc. novels) and suspense is a winner. I thought the final chapter was odd, worked in some ways but not others, but overall, really enjoyed it. Oh, and the car guy/gun guy stuff, not that I'm either, was fun.
I picked this book up because I trust Dan Simmons, but before I knew what was happening, I was reading a suspence thriller about insurance fraud. Definitely NOT what I was expecting from my past dips into the Simmons pool (Hyperion, Children of the Night, etc.)
And yet, I liked it. Not as much as the others I mentioned, but it was still an acceptably entertaining read for a sick day. Yes, I learned more than I ever thought I would know about insurance scams, and I confess to skipping through the...more
And yet, I liked it. Not as much as the others I mentioned, but it was still an acceptably entertaining read for a sick day. Yes, I learned more than I ever thought I would know about insurance scams, and I confess to skipping through the...more
darwin è un investigare delle assicurazioni ... per lui il rasoio di hokam è la via più sicura alla veritòà e quando c'è bisogno c'è sempre quello che ha imparato in 'nam
Previously read 2 of Simmons more recent books, The Terror and Drood. Great books! I decided to read this one but it is definitely a man's book. War, guns, guns, guns, down to make model etc. The plot was enjoyable if you suspend disbelief.
Not among his best by any stretch, I gave this four stars instead of three because it has, of all things, the best car chase I've ever read.
I guess I'd describe this book as a "popcorn" novel. Shoot-em-ups and car chases are all through this book. Nothing heavy.
Got all of about seven or eight pages in before the sheer pretentiousness of it made it fall to the floor, where it stayed.
I really liked Darwin, the main character (and I like the fact that Simmons often works in the characters from the Summer of Night novel into his other stories). The story however, was just "eh" to me. I found myself skipping over A LOT of the detail he puts into this which makes me feel kind of guilty. It looked like he did a lot of work researching all that info. But the information and detail is bombarding and doesn't add a whole lot to the story, in my opinion. The book was pretty well writt...more
Entertaining parts, but got tired of reading it about halfway through.
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Dan Simmons was born in Peoria, Illinois, in 1948, and grew up in various cities and small towns in the Midwest, including Brimfield, Illinois, which was the source of his fictional "Elm Haven" in 1991's SUMMER OF NIGHT and 2002's A WINTER HAUNTING. Dan received a B.A. in English from Wabash College in 1970, winning a national Phi Beta Kappa Award during his senior year for excellence in fiction,...more
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Aug 15, 2011 05:12am
Aug 15, 2011 09:18pm