Steve Martini weaves a story based on today's fears and
tomorrow's headlines-riveting in its realism, genuine in
its characters. Jocelyn "Joss" Cole, a burned-out public
defender from L.A., has opted for a quieter life in the
San Juan Islands of Washington State. Joss has no
significant clients other than a group of commercial
fisherman suffering from a strange and serious illness, a
condition that doctors cannot diagnose, and which Joss
believes has an industrial cause. Then into her office
comes Dean Belden, a well-heeled client in search of a
lawyer to help him set up a business in the islands.
Within days Belden is subpoenaed to appear before a
federal grand jury. Less than an hour after testifying,
and before Joss can discover what happened in the secrecy
of the grand jury room, Belden dies in a fiery explosion
of his float plane on Seattle's Lake Union. Gideon Van Ry
is a nuclear fission expert and a scholar in residence at
the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey,
California. One of his duties is to update the Center's
database, an extensive catalog listing fissionable
materials and weapons of mass destruction. Gideon is
troubled by the apparent failure to account for two small
tactical nuclear devices missing from a storage facility
in the former Soviet Union.The two weapons were last seen
in packing crates, to be shipped to an American company
called Belden Electronics. Gideon has been unable to
locate this firm, and now he is left with only one
possible lead, the lawyer who incorporated the company-
Jocelyn Cole. Fraught with tension and suspense, Critical
Mass is Steve Martini at his electrifying best. It is the
story of what can happen in a world where private hate
and public apathy combine to uncork the sleeping but
deadly genie of nuclear terror.
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