THE GENESIS ROCK by Edwin Corley

The Big Apple's about to get the big one, and the only warning is THE GENESIS ROCK!

That's an ancient rock from deep within the earth, the most famous example being a sample taken from the moon by Apollo 15 in 1971, where it had lain undisturbed for 4 billion years after being ejected from the earth during some primordial upheaval. Geologist Janet McCoy has just identified a piece found in Central Park during construction for subway expansion as just such a rock, meaning that the bedrock under Manhattan isn't nearly as stable as formerly thought ...

A volcano in NYC should be a no brainer for extreme disaster thills, but Corley's story is disappointingly limp and unfocused, spending way too much time on pointless filler flashbacks to Janet and her estranged husband Linus' courtship down in Mexico while also piling on more and more ancillary characters until we can hardly keep track and don't hardly care. Corley is also too cutesy with his characters, letting us know just who we're supposed to cheer for and boo hiss at in clumsy scenes of would-be snappy repartee - and would you believe that all the male characters keep noticing how fricken hot McCoy is? Brains and beauty, wow!

When the earth finally erupts, there's a little bit of action, but not enough, and the climax involves too many meetings and phone calls to be very suspenseful. The techno thriller aspects around McCoy's volcano knowledge are adequate, anyways. Corley drops references to prior work, like his NYC race hate thriller Siege and his nuclear thriller The Jesus Factor, and weaves a secret Mars mission into the plot to no real end. It doesn't add up to much.

Hardcover art

The official Edwin Corley website features biographical information, pseudonyms, and a bibliography. Corley died young at the age of 50, just months after his wife passed.

Author Edwin Corley (1931-1981)

The Genesis Rock earns a shabby 1/4 rating. Find your volcanic thrills and sexy scientists elsewhere.

Dell Publishing, 1981