The FBI doesn’t believe it. The Governor wants the problem to disappear. But agent Judy Maddox knows the threat is real: An extreme group of eco-terrorists has the means and the know-how to set off a massive earthquake of epic proportions. For California, time is running out.
Now Maddox is scrambling to hunt down a petty criminal turned cult leader turned homicidal mastermind. Because she knows that the dying has already begun. And things will only get worse when the earth violently shifts, bolts, and shakes down to its very core.
Praise for The Hammer of Eden
“Follett ratchets up the Richter scale of suspense.”—USA Today
“Peerless pacing and character development . . . The Hammer of Eden will nail readers to their seats.”—People (A Page-Turner of the Week)
“The thrills hit unnervingly close to home in Follett’s latest white-knuckler.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“Riveting . . . taut plotting, tense action, skillful writing, and myriad unexpected twists make this one utterly unputdownable.”—Booklist (starred review)
The one thing Californians fear most is a full-scale earthquake. The thing Priest fears most is the destruction of his commune in the Sierra Nevada foothills – the one place he can hide from his mobster past. He has to make the Governor of California listen to him. And now he has a way. He knows how to create an earthquake. And if his demands aren’t met, the next quake is just 48 hours away…
The Hammer of Eden is a story where the bad guys figure out how to cause an earthquake. They use a machine called a seismic vibrator which is an enormous hammer mounted on the back of a truck. It is usually used to find oil. The hammer sends shockwaves through the earth’s crust and the reflections of the vibrations are then mapped to show the sub-surface of the earth.
Ken Follett’s view
I got the idea from New Scientist magazine. The debate about what actually causes earthquakes is long running and multi-faceted. There is a theory called the low stress theory which suggests that the triggering event of an earthquake is a relatively weak vibration in the earth’s crust.
I figured that if that theory was correct then a terrorist group could hijack a seismic vibrator and use it threaten an earthquake to further their own aims. That’s where the fun starts. I think The Hammer of Eden is my best book so far.
Editorial Reviews.
Amazon.com Review
The unlikely idea of a bunch of commune-dwelling radicals deliberately setting off an earthquake starts making sense in this unabridged reading of Ken Follett's thriller. Alexander Adams's radio-friendly voice moves smoothly from narrative to dialogue to flashbacks. He's especially terrific when narrating the violent, unspoken thoughts of Priest, the illiterate but charismatic villain, whose plan to save his idyllic commune could ultimately destroy much more nature than it preserves. (Running time: 13 hours, eight cassettes) --Lou Schuler
From Publishers Weekly
After 20 years of writing bestselling novels, Follett is enough of a pro to produce a reliable page-turner from a flimsy premise?as he does here. His working out of how a rural, socially radical California commune moves not heaven but earth to stave off the loss of their land to a government dam and the ensuing flood is smartly paced if nearly devoid of inspiration. What distinguishes it is not the communards' weapon, a stolen seismic vibrator generally used by oil companies to sound for liquid gold but also handy for starting earthquakes. Nor is it the mechanical progression of the plot, as the radicals, calling themselves the Hammer of Eden, escalate threats and consequent quakes in order to blackmail the state into halting the dam until the finale finds them about to devastate San Francisco. Nor is it the by-the-book chase of the terrorists by a headstrong female FBI agent who might have walked onstage from any of a dozen other thrillers. What does?other than its efficient telling?raise the novel above mundanity is the depth of characterization of its villains, a Follett forte since his splendid debut in Eye of the Needle. Follett devotes many pages to backstory, creating in Priest, once a smalltime hood and now the commune's leader, in Star, his hippie earth-woman, and in Melanie, a bitter young beauty who throws in with the commune, fully realized outcasts, crazed and desperate idealists whose actions are as believable as they are heinous. All else in the novel, including the perfunctory prose, serve only to push the story quickly through its paces, but Follett's troupe of lost souls makes it dance to a memorable, mournful tune. Agent, Al Zuckerman; major ad/promo; simultaneous Random House audio and large-print edition.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Richard Granger, a charismatic fugitive known as Priest, controls a long-established winemaking commune in northern California that loses its government lease because of a dam project. Ignoring other alternatives, his group becomes "The Hammer of Eden" and threatens to cause an earthquake unless the governor halts construction. When the threats are ignored, Priest uses a seismic vibrator to ever-increasing effect. San Francisco-based FBI agent Judy Maddox teams up with a seismic expert who is estranged from one of the terrorists and attracted to Judy; together, they guide the FBI in a frantic effort to prevent an earthquake on the Embarcadero. The promising concept and characterizations are weakened by too many coincidences and the sympathetic portrayal of Priest, an antihero of the first rank. Though Follett's latest thriller is not at the level of his earlier titles (e.g., The Third Twin, LJ 9/15/96), his fans and the planned media blitz will create demand.AV. Louise Saylor, Eastern Washington Univ. Lib., Cheney
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Follett's latest concerns a secret California hippie commune whose existence is threatened when the state opts to build a power plant on the site. Priest, the commune's charismatic leader, vows to stay put no matter what. He figures the threat of a major earthquake is a perfect way to blackmail the state into abandoning the power-plant idea, and just in case he needs to deliver the goods, he thinks he knows how to produce a huge trembler that will bring the state to its knees. Stealing a seismic vibrator from a local oil-drilling site, Priest persuades one of his followers, a wanna-be seismologist, to help him figure out the rest. Pitted against Priest is FBI agent Judy Maddox, who's hot to solve the case and convince her superiors she's ready for a major promotion. Racing to find the mysterious Priest and stop him before he can shake California to smithereens, Maddox enlists the help of handsome seismologist Michael Quercus. But even the predictable romance doesn't deter the two from taking care of the bad guys and saving California from the Big One. Fortunately, a ho-hum premise turns into a riveting thriller in Follett's skillful hands. Taut plotting, tense action, skillful writing, and myriad unexpected twists make this one utterly unputdownable. Destined for bestsellerdom. Emily Melton
From Kirkus Reviews
A man-made earthquake is at the epicenter of a dull thud of a thriller. Richard Grangersemi-reformed thief, occasional murderer, practicing guruheads a cult hunkered down in an idyllic California valley. The cult, in fact, has been hunkered down for 25 long years, making wine and babies and fashioning a life free of the crassness seen as endemic to capitalist America. But now the valley is threatened with extinction. It's The Guv'ment! It's nuclear testing! It's a situation that cannot be tolerated, decides Granger, who sets about stealing something called a seismic vibrator. This, in addition to generating a fair number of wink-wink, nudge-nudge jokes throughout the story, is the piece of equipment needed to implement a counter threat, the artificial earthquake. You use the vibrator to pound the earth at strategic places along a sensitive fault lineplaces that can be identified by any well-disposed seismologist, one such happening to be the cult member who is Granger's lover. The Guv'ment is duly warned: Cease nuclear testing, Granger advises via a talk-radio show, or watch while we make a disaster. Enter Judy Maddox, a sprightly young FBI agent with obligatory great body and groovy brain. With her comes hunkish Michael Quercus, seismologist for the good guys. Then, this being the kind of novel it is, also enter some nasty, plot-thickening office politics. Tension heightens when the cult (a.k.a. the Hammer of Eden) demonstrates that its capability is for real. And next time, Granger promises, we won't be wreaking havoc on some worthless expanse of uninhabited desert. But will there be a next time? Will there be a showdown/shootout? Will there be a clinch at the end? Pat, predictable, relentlessly formulaic. Still, Folletts (The Third Twin, 1996, etc.) eager and ample following will no doubt come through again. (Television satellite tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
"Follett ratchets up the Richter scale of suspense."--USA Today
"Peerless pacing and character development . . . The Hammer of Eden will nail readers to their seats."--People (A Page-Turner of the Week)
"The thrills hit unnervingly close to home in Follett’s latest white-knuckler."--San Francisco Chronicle
"Riveting . . . taut plotting, tense action, skillful writing, and myriad unexpected twists make this one utterly unputdownable."--Booklist (starred review)
Review
" Follett ratchets up the Richter scale of suspense."
--USA Today
" PEERLESS PACING AND CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT . . . THE HAMMER OF EDEN WILL NAIL READERS TO THEIR SEATS."
--People (A Page-turner of the Week)
" THE THRILLS HIT UNNERVINGLY CLOSE TO HOME IN FOLLETT'S LATEST WHITE-KNUCKLER."
--San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle
" RIVETING . . . TAUT PLOTTING, TENSE ACTION, SKILLFUL WRITING, AND MYRIAD UNEXPECTED TWISTS MAKE THIS ONE UTTERLY UNPUTDOWNABLE."
--Booklist (starred and boxed review)
From the Publisher
11 cds
From the Inside Flap
The FBI doesn't believe it. The Governor wants the problem to disappear. But agent Judy Maddox knows the threat is real: an extreme group of eco-terrorists has the means and the know-how to set off a massive earthquake of epic proportions. For California, time is running out.
Now Maddox is scrambling to hunt down a petty criminal turned cult leader turned homicidal mastermind. Because Judy knows that the dying has already begun. And soon, the earth will violently shift, bolt, and shake down to its very core. . . .
From the Back Cover
"Follett ratchets up the Richter scale of suspense."
--USA Today
"PEERLESS PACING AND CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT . . . THE HAMMER OF EDEN WILL NAIL READERS TO THEIR SEATS."
--People (A Page-turner of the Week)
"THE THRILLS HIT UNNERVINGLY CLOSE TO HOME IN FOLLETT'S LATEST WHITE-KNUCKLER."
--San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle
"RIVETING . . . TAUT PLOTTING, TENSE ACTION, SKILLFUL WRITING, AND MYRIAD UNEXPECTED TWISTS MAKE THIS ONE UTTERLY UNPUTDOWNABLE."
--Booklist (starred and boxed review)
About the Author
Ken Follett burst into the book world with Eye of the Needle, an award-winning thriller and international bestseller. He has since written numerous other bestselling thrillers and historical novels, including The Hammer of Eden, The Third Twin, and A Place Called Freedom. He lives in England with his wife, Barbara.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Excerpt from Chapter 1
A man called Priest pulled his cowboy hat down at the front and peered across the flat, dusty desert of South Texas.
The low dull green bushes of thorny mesquite and sagebrush stretched in every direction as far as he could see. In front of him, a ridged and rutted track ten feet wide had been driven through the vegetation. These tracks were called senderos by the Hispanic bulldozer drivers who cut them in brutally straight lines. On one side, at precise fifty-yard intervals, bright pink plastic marker flags fluttered on short wire poles. A truck moved slowly along the sendero.
Priest had to steal the truck.
He had stolen his first vehicle at the age of eleven, a brand-new snow white 1961 Lincoln Continental parked, with the keys in the dash, outside the Roxy Theatre on South Broadway in Los Angeles. Priest, who was called Ricky in those days, could hardly see over the steering wheel. He had been so scared he almost wet himself, but he drove it ten blocks and handed the keys proudly to Jimmy "Pigface" Riley, who gave him five bucks, then took his girl for a drive and crashed the car on the Pacific Coast Highway. That was how Ricky became a member of the Pigface Gang.
But this truck was not just a vehicle.
As he watched, the powerful machinery behind the driver's cabin slowly lowered a massive steel plate, six feet square, to the ground. There was a pause, then he heard a low-pitched rumble. A cloud of dust rose around the truck as the plate began to pound the earth rhythmically. He felt the ground shake beneath his feet.
This was a seismic vibrator, a machine for sending shock waves through the earth's crust. Priest had never had much education, except in stealing cars, but he was the smartest person he had ever met, and he understood how the vibrator worked. It was similar to radar and sonar. The shock waves were reflected off features in the earth--such as rock or liquid--and they bounced back to the surface, where they were picked up by listening devices called geophones, or jugs.
Priest worked on the jug team. They had planted more than a thousand geophones at precisely measured intervals in a grid a mile square. Every time the vibrator shook, the reflections were picked up by the jugs and recorded by a supervisor working in a trailer known as the doghouse. All this data would later be fed into a supercomputer in Houston to produce a three-dimensional map of what was under the earth's surface. The map would be sold to an oil company.
The vibrations rose in pitch, making a noise like the mighty engines of an ocean liner gathering speed; then the sound stopped abruptly. Priest ran along the sendero to the truck, screwing up his eyes against the billowing dust. He opened the door and clambered up into the cabin. A stocky black-haired man of about thirty was at the wheel. "Hey, Mario," Priest said as he slid into the seat alongside the driver.
"Hey, Ricky."
Richard Granger was the name on Priest's commercial driving license (class B). The license was forged, but the name was real.
He was carrying a carton of Marlboro cigarettes, the brand Mario smoked. He tossed the carton onto the dash. "Here, I brought you something."
"Hey, man, you don't need to buy me no cigarettes."
"I'm always bummin' your smokes." He picked up the open pack on the dash, shook one out, and put it in his mouth.
Mario smiled. "Why don't you just buy your own cigarettes?"
"Hell, no, I can't afford to smoke."
"You're crazy, man." Mario laughed.
Priest lit his cigarette. He had always had an easy ability to get on with people, make them like him. On the streets where he grew up, people beat you up if they didn't like you, and he had been a runty kid. So he had developed an intuitive feel for what people wanted from him--deference, affection, humor, whatever--and the habit of giving it to them quickly. In the oilfield, what held the men together was humor: usually mocking, sometimes clever, often obscene.
Although he had been here only two weeks, Priest had won the trust of his co-workers. But he had not figured out how to steal the seismic vibrator. And he had to do it in the next few hours, for tomorrow the truck was scheduled to be driven to a new site, seven hundred miles away, near Clovis, New Mexico.
His vague plan was to hitch a ride with Mario. The trip would take two or three days--the truck, which weighed forty thousand pounds, had a highway speed of around forty miles per hour. At some point he would get Mario drunk or something, then make off with the truck. He had been hoping a better plan would come to him, but inspiration had failed so far.
"My car's dying," he said. "You want to give me a ride as far as San Antonio tomorrow?"
Mario was surprised. "You ain't coming all the way to Clovis?"
"Nope." He waved a hand at the bleak desert landscape. "Just look around," he said. "Texas is so beautiful, man, I never want to leave."
Mario shrugged. There was nothing unusual about a restless transient in this line of work. "Sure, I'll give you a ride." It was against company rules to take passengers, but the drivers did it all the time. "Meet me at the dump."
Priest nodded. The garbage dump was a desolate hollow, full of rusting pickups and smashed TV sets and verminous mattresses, on the outskirts of Shiloh, the nearest town. No one would be there to see Mario pick him up, unless it was a couple of kids shooting snakes with a .22 rifle. "What time?"
"Let's say six."
"I'll bring coffee."
Priest needed this truck. He felt his life depended on it. His palms itched to grab Mario right now and throw him out and just drive away. But that was no good. For one thing, Mario was almost twenty years younger than Priest and might not let himself be thrown out so easily. For another, the theft had to go undiscovered for a few days. Priest needed to drive the truck to California and hide it before the nation's cops were alerted to watch out for a stolen seismic vibrator.
There was a beep from the radio, indicating that the supervisor in the doghouse had checked the data from the last vibration and found no problems. Mario raised the plate, put the truck in gear, and moved forward fifty yards, pulling up exactly alongside the next pink marker flag. Then he lowered the plate again and sent a ready signal. Priest watched closely, as he had done several times before, making sure he remembered the order in which Mario moved the levers and threw the switches. If he forgot something later, there would be no one he could ask.
They waited for the radio signal from the doghouse that would start the next vibration. This could be done by the driver in the truck, but generally supervisors preferred to retain command themselves and start the process by remote control. Priest finished his cigarette and threw the butt out the window. Mario nodded toward Priest's car, parked a quarter of a mile away on the two-lane blacktop. "That your woman?"
Priest looked. Star had got out of the dirty light blue Honda Civic and was leaning on the hood, fanning her face with her straw hat. "Yeah," he said.
"Lemme show you a picture." Mario pulled an old leather billfold out of the pocket of his jeans. He extracted a photograph and handed it to Priest. "This is Isabella," he said proudly.
Priest saw a pretty Mexican girl in her twenties wearing a yellow dress and a yellow Alice band in her hair. She held a baby on her hip, and a dark-haired boy was standing shyly by her side. "Your children?"
He nodded. "Ross and Betty."
Priest resisted the impulse to smile at the Anglo names. "Good-looking kids." He thought of his own children and almost told Mario about them; but he stopped himself just in time. "Where do they live?"
"El Paso."
The germ of an idea sprouted in Priest's mind. "You get to see them much?"
Mario shook his head. "I'm workin' and workin', man. Savin' my money to buy them a place. A nice house, with a big kitchen and a pool in the yard. They deserve that."
The idea blossomed. Priest suppressed his excitement and kept his voice casual, making idle conversation. "Yeah, a beautiful house for a beautiful family, right?"
"That's what I'm thinking."
The radio beeped again, and the truck began to shake. The noise was like rolling thunder, but more regular. It began on a profound bass note and slowly rose in pitch. After exactly fourteen seconds it stopped.
In the quiet that followed, Priest snapped his fingers. "Say, I got an idea...No, maybe not."
"What?"
"I don't know if it would work."
"What, man, what?"
"I just thought, you know, your wife is so pretty and your kids are so cute, it's wrong you don't see them more often."
"That's your idea?"
"No. My idea is, I could drive the truck to New Mexico while you go visit them, that's all." It was important not to seem too keen, Priest told himself. "But I guess it wouldn't work out," he added in a who-gives-a-damn voice.
From the Hardcover edition.
From AudioFile
Terrorists threaten to cause earthquakes throughout California if their demands aren't met in this agreeable, though only mildly engaging, story. The fact that the novel is at least a hundred pages (or, in this case, two cassettes) too long is mitigated by Alexander Adams's clean, articulate reading, which is well paced and laced with thoughtful vocal characterizations. Can FBI agent Judy Maddox save the day before San Francisco falls into the sea? In the Books on Tape version you'll get to hear a few extras, including the author's afterword and jacket notes, which are excised from this Random House retail version. J.M. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine
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