A Hole in Texas
Herman Wouk
(Reviewer - Narayan Radhakrishnan)
2004 Little, Brown & Co.
ISBN: 0316525901

A physicist with a quiet, settled life, a prestigious job at NASA, a devoted wife & new baby, gets mixed up in an international scandal about a powerful bomb.

Sr. Associate Reviewer Narayan Radhakrishnan writes:

Herman Wouk is an author who needs no introduction. With The Caine Mutiny written half- a- century back, he gained worldwide fame, an unmatched reputation & a bestseller cult following that was ever- growing with, War and Remembrance, & The Glory.

So it is with great expectation that I grabbed my copy of A Hole In Texas, Herman Wouk's first fiction work in nearly a decade. This time round he presents a political/techno thriller surrounding the media & political frenzy in America, when the Chinese announce the discovery of something called the Boson bomb -- something far, far, far powerful than the Hydrogen bomb.

Guy Carpenter, a physicist at NASA had worked hard on developing something called the “Super conducting Super Collider”, a research project for detecting a tiny particle called the Higgs Boson. But political pressures in & outside Congress forces the shutdown of the project, & Guy finds himself out of an interesting job.

Now some years later, some Chinese scientists claim that they have discovered the Boson -- & they do not hide the fact that the Boson has the power & potential of being developed into a bomb. Congress gets tensed & it is a mystery how the Chinese got the technology for developing the bomb. Suspicion falls on Guy -- who is now working in NASA's jet-propulsion lab -- for one of the scientists who is credited with developing the Boson for the Chinese is Wen Mei Li, a past associate & flame of Guy Carpenter.

Everything is in chaos, & what follows is a tumultuous journey of a nation in terror & of a person, who has everything to lose -- his family & good name.

A Hole in Texas reminds me of The Caine Mutiny in some respects -- the wonderful Congress Committee hearing is somewhat reminiscent of the Court-martial scene. Of course the novel is far too short, i.e. by Wouk's standards & at 473 pages (Large print), it is one of the shortest Wouk works I have read.

I enjoyed the work very much, by no means equivalent to The Caine Mutiny, but it's a grand & warm read.

More from Herman Wouk:
War and Remembrance
Marjorie Morningstar
The Hope
The Winds of War
The Glory & many more!
(06/06/04)

Narayan
2004©Narayan Radhakrishnan
A RebeccasReads.Com Sr. Associate Reviewer

Reviewer's Bio:
I am a 26 years old lawyer practicing in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India. Along with my legal practice, I have finished post-graduate studies for both Business Law & Human Rights. I am a self proclaimed numero-uno legal thriller lover & am the proud owner of all of Grisham's & Turow's novels. I enjoy John Mortimer's Rumpole & relish an occasional Martini & a rare Scot(ch)t-oline with a Patterson on the side.

My work A FICTION OF LAW is now about 500 pages in length & features 500 lawyer authors & 2000 legal thrillers covering a 300 year period - inclusive of entries from the USA, UK, Asia, Europe, China, Middle East etc. Still in search of a publisher.
www.keralatourism.org