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Title: Beach fodder
Review: Crichton knows how to write a page-turner. Yet in this case, it's analogous to eating Doritos. You know they're not great food, and after the first few, they're not even that tasty...you just can't stop. An hour later, after you've eaten the bag, you definitely don't feel all that great.Characters are stereotypes and flat as paper. We don't really learn what makes these people tick. Plot is relatively predictable. If the whole cast of characters crashed in the plane most readers probably would not feel a bit of loss. The only characters that we may feel some empathy with, the young family in the first scene, are disposed of and never referred to again. Ironically, Crichton's main thrust here is a criticism of the vapid and substanceless media of commercial television news. And that's pretty much what he delivers up here in print.You'll read it to the end but it's lite stuff. Beach fodder. Put it in the empty bag with the Doritos and coke cans when you're done.
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