Hurricane Fever – Tobias Buckell

Hurricane Fever
Tobias Buckell
272 pages
published in 2014

On Twitter,Tobias Buckell asked for reviewers for his latest novel, Hurricane Fever, so I took him up on it. Buckell is a writer I’ve heard a lot of good things about and who in the usual sf fandom squabbles has consisently been on the right side, so I was keen to try his work out. Hurricane Fever is being promoted and indeed reads like a technothriller, though the setting, — a near future Caribbean menaced by almost constant hurricanes — is science fictional, if barely considering the actual state of the world. The focus of the story itself though remains solidly in technothriller territory and it wouldn’t take much to make it over into a contemporary thriller.

Prudence “Roo” Jones is a retired agent of the Caribbean Intelligence Group, now focusing on sailing his boat Spitfire and keeping his orphaned cousin Delroy in school and out of trouble. That all changes when Zee, an old friend of his spying days sends him a final message. His instincts tell him to ignore it, but he was a friend so he feels he has no choice but to go and pick up the package he died for. Not long after, decidedly Aryan looking, shaven headed thugs with a fondness for nazi tattoes attack him; there may be a connection.

Also coming into his life and at the same moment is Kit Barlow, Zee’s sister, looking for answers to what happened to her brother. She manages to find Roo just as the nazi thugs do and they have to trust each other to get out of the trap set by them. Once out of it though, can Roo keep on trusting her when he never knew Zee had a sister in the first place? And if she’s not who she says she is, who is she really? Meanwhile there’s still the question of what exactly the data Zee got Roo to pick up means and who the heavies send to retrieve it are working for.

Plotwise Hurricane Fever develops along familiar lines and I for one was able to correctly guess the bad guys plot quite early in the book, based on both the little proloque at the start of the novel and the nature of the data Zee sends Roo. That Kit wasn’t quite whom she seemed was obvious too, though the exact nature was a surprise and finally the fate of Delroy I’m afraid I was worried about from the start. But that’s not the real strength of this thriller anyway, even if Buckell is more than capable of building up and keeping the suspense.

No, what I liked more were Roo and Kit and their relationship. The story is told through Roo’s eyes and it’s clear that from the first moment they met and Kit introduced herself that he didn’t trust her story, but was willing to trust her. They work well together and both are competent people: no damsel in distress nonsense here, in fact she’s more in control than he is. Also appreciated: no obligatory romance.

The other thing I liked was the slow buildup before the thriller plot kicked in. It’s only in chapter eight that things kick off, first Roo and Delroy have to deal with getting into cover before the encrouching hurricane hits the islands. There’s a lot of sailing and the mechanics of sailing in this novel, a lot of nature and natural forces in counterpoint to the human intriguing driving the plot. And in the background there are always the realities of living in a climate changed altered Caribbean, the reality of having to deal with risen sea levels and near constant storms.

Ultimately what drives the plot is revenge. It’s the motivation for Beauchamp, the villain and it’s what drives both Roo and Kit, each driven to vengeance through the actions of Beauchamp. Yes, once again, it’s the unnecessary actions of the villain that prove his undoing; had he left both Kit and Roo alone, they wouldn’t have had a reason to stop him, wouldn’t even have known there was something to stop.

It’s another reminder that Hurricane Fever ultimately is “just” a well told thriller. However, it’s in the little touches that you recognise a great writer in a good one and it’s there that Buckell shows he can do much more. For example, as often in a thriller story, the hero has to infiltrate the bad guy’s lair by dressing up for a party he gives for his business associates. So Roo dresses to the nines in the best James Bond style, finagles an invitation — and is taken for a waiter. The first time this happens, this is an amusing aside about the assumptions about the (white) super rich; the second and third time, they help drive the plot.

Another example. The way Buckell consistently uses singular they and their when talking about people of unknown gender: “A dancer often kept their grace, an athlete a banked fire at their core”. A small thing, but telling and welcome.

Final one. Driving fossil fueled cars as a statement of power and wealth, something I last saw in David Brin’s Earth, that late eighties global warming science fiction thriller written at a time when climate change was still a dire but distant future threat, rather than an seeming inevitable reality.

To sum it up Hurricane Fever is an enjoyable, if somewhat predictable near future thriller, which is written much more intelligently and humane than it needed to be. Also, I need to read more of Buckell.