Reading The Poseidon Project is like a trying the catapult ride at the state fair. What little time you have to prepare allows the tension to mount, and once you’re buckled in there’s no going back before the thrills come at you unrelentingly. 

 

This action-packed mystery thriller begins quietly, in one of the appealing communities
that attract affluent seniors to the desert southwest near Tucson. Molly and John Halloran are two such seniors even if there’s nothing ordinary about them. She’s a somewhat bored, retired teacher while he travels frequently running a private equity firm. Their three grown children are scattered at a distance. 

 

Molly’s honest discontent with the boredom she finds in retirement is offset by the presence of three longstanding friends who, in their own retirements, relocate to the same community where they have lunch together weekly and provide mutual support. And then John disappears while on business in Dubai — and we’re flung out of the catapult.  If we’d been lulled into thinking Molly was our protagonist, we’re disabused of that notion with the introduction of Lukas. He’s Molly’s oldest child, an IT entrepreneur with the contacts and means to drop everything and catch a chartered jet to Tucson as soon as his mother calls with the word that his father is missing. 

The pace is fast, the plot is intricate, There are enough hints to give the careful reader some signals about the nature of John’s disappearance and who might be behind it. The why of it requires Molly’s big reveal, and with it the acknowledgment that an entire and amazing life can predate the pigeon-holing of someone into the role of Mom. 

The fast paced and intricate plot does not leave much room for the development of
secondary characters, leaving the reader curious about them and wanting more. Yet
there is so much packed into this slim volume that any greater focus on character would
weigh down the experience of this book, eliminating that sense of dynamic propulsion
careening through the chapters toward conclusion. It’s enough to acknowledge how
deftly we are carried along a trajectory that credibly incorporates science, international
business, environmental peril and cultural conflicts.