For years the commune has been living on federal land with a minimal annual rent. Now, however, their land and their vines are about to be flooded with the construction of a nuclear power plant. They need a plan to force the governor to abandon plant construction.

One of the most recent members is a former geology graduate student whose husband is a seismologist. He believes that application of force to a stress point on a fault will initiate an earthquake. This force can be applied in several ways; one way is by utilizing a seismic vibrator, a large piece of equipment used in oil exploration.

Priest and Star, his long-time sexual partner and mother of his daughter, steal a seismic vibrator (there are a number of wink-wink joke about this term) from a Texas company. Calling themselves the Hammer of Eden, they post their threat on an Internet chat room.

Meanwhile, Judy Maddox, a beautiful half-Vietnamese Amerasian FBI agent, has been instrumental in the conviction of a long-sought criminal. She expects a promotion but instead finds herself demoted by her new back-stabbing supervisor. She is assigned the joke case of the Hammer of Eden threatening to cause an earthquake.

Judy is persuaded by a colleague that the case might have some merit. When she contacts Michael Quercus, the seismologist husband, he convinces her that an earthquake could be deliberately caused. Judy reports this to an aide of the governor and her boss (who tries to discredit her). They refuse to believe her.

Priest and his cohorts, however, are successful and the search is on.

At this point, the reader ought to be rooting for Judy and Michael to save California. There is a simple plot formula for thrillers: bad guys come up with a diabolical plan, good guys foil the bad guys just in the nick of time. (Have you ever noticed that the hero always disarms the bomb with only a few seconds left – never hours – till detonation?) Ken Follett's most recent thriller follows this tried-and-true model in most respects.

There's a glitch, however: it's uncertain who're the good guys and who're the bad. The author has made Priest and the aging hippies so sympathetic and most of the government officials so nasty that it's hard not to hope that the governor will cave in and the commune be saved.

Practically all the character development is devoted to the commune members. Priest in particular is fully developed. He's severely dyslexic and had a neglectful and abusive childhood, but he has excellent leadership and interpersonal skills and he's great with kids. Yes, he's done bad things but he's not evil through and through, and you can't overlook that disadvantaged background and his desperate desire to save the commune.

Judy's mixed ethnic background is explored in some detail, and her relationship with her father is close and loving, but she's a driven career woman who is determined to achieve great success. Her romantic relationship with Michael doesn't ring true; there seems to be no real attraction between them. She's more admirable than her co-workers, but she's not a character who captures a reader's heart.

Except for Judy, most of the government officials have virtually no redeeming social value. Her supervisor is especially unscrupulous; there's no dirty trick he wouldn't pull. Government bureaucrats are often depicted in fiction as uncaring and indifferent, but these are worse than most. Contrast them to a small group living a simple life in nature's paradise, cultivating organic grapevines. It's hard to hope the government agents will outwit the bad guys when there's room to debate who's worse.

Scenes in the first few chapters are somewhat confusing as the action shifts from present to flashback with no indication of when is when, but eventually it starts to make sense. There are a number of different threads continuing though the book so there are abrupt changes from one chapter to another with the result that the book reads unevenly.

The earthquake scheme, however, seems plausible because the scientific information is clearly explained. It's unfortunate that the book's characterization isn't better. If it had been, there might be more thrills in this thriller.

--Lesley Dunlap