Primeval: An Event Group Thriller

Golemon's fanciful fifth Event Group thriller (after Leviathan) offers an alternative view of what happened to Nicholas II and his family at Ekaterinburg in 1918. After two of the last Russian czar's children, Anastasia and Alexei, survive and escape to Canada, the story leaps forward to 1962, when a secret American plane on a mission to decapitate the Soviet leadership crashes near Ekaterinburg. In the present, vicious Russian gangsters begin a bloody search for the legendary "Twins" of Peter the Great, "twin diamonds the size of ostrich eggs." When the gangsters abduct CIA agent Lynn Simpson, they pay the price for being unaware that she's the sister of series hero Col. Jack Collins of the Event Group, a shadowy U.S. government agency that specializes in bizarre assignments. Collins and the team he leads to rescue Simpson encounter trigger-happy bad guys, Quebec separatists plotting a coup, and intelligent bigfoot humanoids. Feeble attempts at realism don't redeem the silly plot. (July)