Despite the promising ingredients, most readers will probably be so bogged down by overheated pseudo-jargon (""everything that was happening today was but the final blossoming of a stupendous explosion that had begun as a small flare-much like. Meanwhile, a crooked former talk-show host with messianic pretensions whips up a frenzy among the hungry, frightened populace. After the bugs kill his wife, Sinclair and his nine-year-old daughter escape to the relative safety of a nearby research facility, and Sinclair begins an investigation of the widespread insect extinctions that have brought on a host of other, world-threatening disasters. Pellegrino gets off to a good start: paleobiologist Richard Sinclair's Long Island neighborhood has been attacked by a deadly horde of mites-the first indication that something has gone horribly wrong with the world's ecosystem. What it doesn't have is the mighty Crichton narrative engine to carry it over the rougher patches of weird science. According to the publisher, it was Pellegrino's theory of dinosaur cloning that jump-started Jurassic Park and his first novel does share with Crichton's novel a certain X-Files-meets-Scientific American appeal. ""They're dead, I tell you! All the fungus gnats are dead!"" screams a famous entomologist just before his protective suit is ripped apart and he's devoured by millions of vicious mites in this biothriller debut from self-described ""scientific gadfly"" Pellegrino.
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