Whales caught in polemic drift net

Brenda Peterson presents her opposition to the U.S. military’s underwater weapons program in a political novel that’s overly political and insufficiently novelistic.

Lovely Isabel Spinner practically oozes sensitivity. She touches the hearts of baby seals, dolphin calves, men, family members, ideological enemies. Isabel’s job in a forensic pathology laboratory leads her to a mysterious whale stranding caused by Navy sonar experiments off the Oregon Coast. Her photographer-brother introduces her to his diving partner Marshall McGreggor. When Marshall receives a baboon’s heart in an emergency transplant, he begins hallucinating about being on the African savanna.

These already improbable circumstances build to an over-the-top climax, as Marshall joins an animal rights group’s attack on a primate lab engaged in research into the techniques that saved his life. While on the lam from that caper, he helps Isabel sabotage the military’s newest sonar installation. Even militant defenders of whales will prefer a better-constructed polemic.

-- Charles Solomon