The Dolomite Solution is set in northern Italy; Innsbruck Austria; and Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island. Two scientists have combined research to find a cure for heart disease. They are set to turn their findings over to an Austrian biotechnology company and are a shoe-in for the Nobel prize when one of them is killed on a mountain road. Jake Adams, former Network agent, has just moved to Innsbruck for a break from his exploits when he receives a strange phone call which propels him into the most convoluted web of murder; betrayal, and industrial espionage he has yet encountered:

"Quinn laughed to himself, gazing through the night vision goggles at the dumpster that Adams had just scurried behind like a frightened rat. His shots had gone way over the man's head, but then Jake had no way of knowing that. It was perfect. When he first heard that the man who had ruined his life would be in the same city as him, he couldn't believe his good fortune. When he had actually seen the man, he knew his luck was changing for the better. He had thought long and hard in prison, projecting a scenario for this very meeting. The city didn't matter. Circumstances like this couldn't be ignored. He had Adams just where he wanted him."

Trevor Scott delivers with The Dolomite Solution. Jake Adams is up against a bitter enemy, and with his usual aplomb Scott ratchets up the action. He is an expert at thoroughly deceiving the reader, drawing us into a seemingly insolvable plot just as he fascinates us with action that is non-stop. Jake is his usual disarming self, understated in a thoroughly fascinating way until his enemies inflate with their own devious cunning. We can't wait for him to succeed, and we can't help but be relieved when he finds his true lady love in the end...a wonderful read.

Shelley Glodowski, Reviewer

The characters are drawn vividly and with depth. The incidents are both amusing and realistic. Clara Middleton is one of the great witty heroines of English literature, perhaps the wittiest Victorian heroine.

The beginning can be slow going. Meredith likes to use twenty words when other people might use ten. He also likes to play verbal games. As you proceed in the novel and get used to the style, you can have a lot of fun picking out the puns, allusions, etc.

This is Meredith's best novel. The plot is tightly controlled and the ending is pure comedy in the tradition of Fielding, Austen and Thackeray. I highly recommend this novel to anyone who feels comfortable reading Victorian English and likes a good love-comedy.

But I am so glad I picked up this book. I loved it. After I read it, I went out and found Adams' and Brooks' first novel, the Unwound Way, which I enjoyed just as much.

The books are pure space opera, but of the best kind. It's like all my favorite plot elements in a science-fiction adventure have been brought together and judiciously mixed with a healthy dose of originality. These books have some of the most delicious plot twists I have ever had the pleasure to be confounded by.

I hate comparisons to other others, but I want to make people read these books, so I'm going to make a simplified comparison. If Robert Heinlein, Roger Zelazny, and Larry Niven had ever collaborated together, the results would have been something like this. Read this book.

To say this book is well-textured is akin to saying the Mona Lisa is a nice picture; well, yes, that's true, but it hardly does the book justice.

Adams and Brooks draw on the life of George Gordon Byron, the sixth Lord Byron, among the best known of the Romantic poets. The protagonist in FAME is Evan Larkspur, whose life resonates with Byron's but ultimately follows its own course. Far in the future, Larkspur's works have become the voice of the Kanalism movement. Seeking to drive out the tyrannical Column that rules humanity, the Kanalists hope to re-establish an earlier, more beneficent government.

The title of the book evokes a stanza from Canto I of DON JUAN, one of Byron's best known works:

What is the end of fame? 'tis but to fill
A certain portion of uncertain paper:
Some liken it to climbing up a hill,
Whose summit, like all hills', is lost in vapour;
For this men write, speak, preach, and heros kill,
And bards burn what they call their 'midnight taper',
To have, when the original is dust,
A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust.

It would take a 6000 word essay to discuss why FAME is such an effective play on Byron's words. Read it, and you'll see.

This book is like an intricate machine, as beautiful to see as it is intriguing to operate, with lustrous gears and glossy levers, parts made from precious materials, gold, silver, ivory, ebony, all interlocking with intricate pieces. The closer you look, the more details you see, like a fractal design revealing new structure at increasingly greater magnifications. It's a versatile engine, brilliantly designed and lovely to boot.

FAME is a great book. Here's hoping it's just the beginning of fame for Adams and Brooks.