The God Particle by Richard Cox Review
Ballantine, May, 2005Trade Paperback, 304 pages
ISBN: 0345462858
Ordering information:
Amazon.com
Two men's lives become intertwined in a search for the
ultimate power in this cerebral, exciting speculative
thriller. Mike McNair is the chief physicist and director of the
North Texas Superconducting Super Collider, which was
privately funded by a billionaire after the government
lost interest in the project. McNair is determined to identify
the elusive Higgs boson (known as the God Particle), a field
of energy that is theorized to hold our universe together. Meanwhile
in Zurich, auto parts manufacturing executive Steve Keeley
finds his highly-ordered life thrown into chaos when he discovers
his fiancé's infidelity. The drunken spree that followed that
discovery lands him in a hospital where he is told he fell
out of a third-floor window (thrown is more like it) and that
he had brain surgery. After the surgery, Steve starts seeing
a mysterious white field all around him. As his powers increase,
he finds he can read people's thoughts and see the particles
that make up our world. Concerned he's losing his mind, Steve
asks himself: "Is insanity simply reality that no one else can see?"
When he reads about Mike McNair's research, some of what is happening to him
makes sense and he knows he has to head to Texas to find the physicist. The two
men meet up, just as McNair discovers that someone has been altering the test
results of his experiments with the super collider. Slowly, the agenda of the
shadowy figures behind the funding of the super collider begin to emerge.
Author Richard Cox combines particle theory, suspense and speculation about the nature of God and the universe, with excellent results. Explaining physics to readers without a scientific background can be tricky: Cox navigates those waters with ease. By using clever metaphors, he makes complex theories easily understandable without sacrificing the underlying science. The atmosphere is perfectly drawn: an air of genuine paranoia suffuses the hapless Steve Keeley, for example. There are at least two romantic subplots, but the tale resonates most when the focus goes back to the super collider and what secrets it might reveal. McNair, the brilliant and somewhat shy physicist is the most engaging character by far. In fact, after he handled all the adventure and intrigue in The God Particle, he really deserves a sequel all to himself.
--Claire E. White
Return to the July 2005 issue of The IWJ.
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