Deep Storm Book Review

Deep Storm
by Lincoln Child
Doubleday January 2007 Website

I know, I know, I haven't posted for almost a whole week. And for me that is unusual. Blame it on the weather. Toronto has been hit with 2 snow storms, and I use up all my energy every time I have to go outside and walk around in the snow. And I have to go outside at least 3 times every day - twice to take my son to and from daycare, and again to buy food. Lifting legs with heavy boots on them is very tiring.


Anyway, I have finished reading several books. Deep Storm is one of them. Doctor Peter Crane is a former Navy medical doctor who worked on submarines, and thus became an expert on illnesses of submersion. He is summoned to a top-secret oil rig out in the North Atlantic (just 40 miles off the coast of Greenland). Once there, he must sign various secrecy documents, and only then is he told of what has been found at the bottom of the Atlantic. ATLANTIS. The problem is that the research staff submerged on the Ocean bed are now falling ill with various illneses - some of the symptoms are physical and others are neurological. So far noone has found any commonality.

So Peter is taken 2 miles down to the Research facility on the Ocean bed. This is where the drilling to Atlantis is done. Once he arrives there, he witnesses various people having psychotic episodes. The Facility is divide unto two sections - the Unclassified section and the Classified section. When the illnesses start spreading to the Classified section, Crane is given security clearance to cross into the classified section. While there he takes EKG readings of the personnel and discovers the THETA waves. These are causing the illnesses. At the same time, Crane discovers that the drilling for Atlantis is just a cover story. The Facility is actually drilling down to the Mantle of the Earth.

The Mohorovicic discontinuity, usually referred to as the Moho, is the boundary between the Earth's crust and the mantle. The Moho serves to separate both oceanic crust and continental crust from underlying mantle. So what will happen when the mantle is breached? You have to read this book and find out.

I enjoyed this book a lot and actually read it in just a few hours. I could not put it down. This is the best of Lincoln Child's solo novels. Child and Douglas Prestion are the authors of the popular Pendergast series as well as a number of other thrillers.