Final Theory

FINAL THEORY; Mark Alpert; New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008; Fiction; 356pp.

No less a luminary than Douglas Preston describes this book as having "a deliciously explosive premise and a breakneck plot." He is right--in this story Einstein is discovered to have actually solved for the Grand Unifying Theory, but suppressed it because it could have led to the
creation of a Weapon of Truly Massive Destruction. Various good and bad types are racing against each other to find the theory first, and the action never lets up. Unfortunately, neither
do the cliches and the condescension. Our hero, David Swift (probably a great grandson of Tom), goes on the lam with a physicist, a convenient plot device for conveying needed scientific information. Merely a coincidence that she is a drop-dead gorgeous. All the FBI agents in this story are incompetent, insensitive meatheads. West Virginians become "Appalachians," not discernibly different from Neanderthals except they wear flannel shirts. Alpert, a writer for Scientific American, certainly has talent, but he needed more of an editorial hand than
just the spell-checker, and he might want to get out of New York every once in awhile and meet some of the natives.

LW