Crawlers by SHIRLEY, JOHN - 2003

Del Rey, 2003. Paperback. Near Fine. Shirley's latest begins horrifyingly--a top-secret government lab is destro yed by nasty, experimental nanotechnology--and just gets creepier, though m ore subtly so for quite a while, with just flashes of strange things in the woods and odd behavior by the involved populace. The comfortable town of Q uiebra is in deadly danger, but the government, afraid of what will happen if the outside world finds out what has been let loose, is playing its card s close to its chest. For the Quiebrans, however, their predicament seems a t first only a streak of light in the night sky and a potentially profitabl e salvage operation for Adair Leverton's father. Shirley's characters are b elievably flawed and variable, while his nasty little nanocreatures are, we ll, nasty (also singleminded about spreading). Meanwhile, his prose is ofte n quite wonderful, even when he is describing something stomach-turningly i cky. This portrayal of the dangers of secret experimentation with the diabo lically dangerous is unnerving, not least because it is frighteningly convi ncing.