Tsunami!

by Richard Martin Stern

With all the craft, drama, and storytelling magic for which he is known, Richard Martin Stern traps his readers in the web of ambitions, professions, love affairs, intrigues, politics, and passions of the community of Encino Beach, California. Meanwhile, deep under the sea, great forces are building toward a massive geologic shift that will start a great wave, a tsunami, racing across the ocean at 400 miles an hour.

At first it is a wave no more than a foot high, moving at fantastic speed. But as it reaches the shallower waters near land it begins to slow and rise. In constricted bays and coves, it becomes a mountain of water hundreds of feet high, capable of instantly destroying anything made by man. The citizens of Encino are warned, and thus they begin their own human, seismic upheavals—when the tsunami reaches the shore, Mr. Stern’s story reaches an overwhelming climax.

This is also a story of people—silly people, intelligent people, good people, bad people, courageous people, frightened people, some generous, some selfish, some scarcely worth consideration except that they are part of the whole—reacting to a natural catastrophe.

Genres: Fiction

318 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1988

About the author

Richard Martin Stern was an American novelist. Stern began his writing career in the 1950s with mystery tales of private investigators, winning a 1959 Edgar Award for Best First Novel, for The Bright Road to Fear.
He was most notable for his 1973 novel The Tower, in which a fire engulfs a new metal-and-glass frame skyrise. Stern was inspired to write the novel by the construction of the World Trade Center in New York City. Warner Brothers bought the rights to the novel shortly after its publication for roughly $400,000, and Stern's book, in combination with the novel The Glass Inferno by Thomas N. Scortia and Frank M. Robinson, was the basis for the movie The Towering Inferno, produced by Irwin Allen and directed by John Guillermin and featuring an all-star cast. The film, shot with a $14 million budget, earned more than $100 million at the American box office.
Stern was known mainly for his mysteries and disaster-related suspense. He died on October 31, 2001, after prolonged illness. He was 86.

Reviews

[Mark Isaak · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent but unremarkable 1980s novel. I am loath to call it adventure fiction, since the disaster promised by its title occupies relatively little of the book. Most of the plot deals with the build-up to that climax, and does so quite successfully, holding interest throughout. Stern did his homework in researching tsunamis but still got some details wrong (an unreasonably high Richter reading from a landslide, wrongly assuming evenly radial spread of the wave energy, and the color of the water). An implausible set of coincidences, as Stern has his characters themselves admit, was needed to bring the tsunami to the southern California setting. The romantic subplots sometimes seemed only slightly less contrived. Still, the characters and the plot were interesting and entertaining.

[Darlene · Rating 3 out of 5]

partly suspenseful also sad in places. just a quick read without a whole lot to think about and the day i read it i just wanted to get lost in something easy to read. this fulfilled that goal.

[Diane Wachter · Rating 3 out of 5]

RDC-M V 4 1988, 12/88. Another disaster story, this time a giant wave hits California. Okay.