Sea Leopard's Quin

For me one of the weaker elements of Craig Thomas' Sea Leopard was the character of the scientist Quin. A very large part of the novel is devoted to his going missing, to the Secret Service's subsequent hunt for him, and what happens to the agent who had to pursue him.

I must admit I didn't care for it, in part because it made for a fatter, slower narrative, but also because of its trading in a number of unfortunate cliches. There is, of course, the way the character figures into the plot in the first place--his insight into the submarine stealthing system that is presented as his own invention, apparently with scarcely anyone else understanding much about it, even as the British navy has taken the program so far as to put it in a sub and have it prowl around Soviet waters as a test. (It's a matter of outworn Edisonade cliche and silly romanticism of the tech start-up where we should have had some acknowledgement of military-industrial Big Science reality, for which Britain is the birthplace, after all.)

Making matters worse, the scientist is a fragile neurotic for whom the Practical Men we are expected to sympathize and identify with have only disgust and contempt, even as they rely on his intelligence and skills to save the day, with much made of their need to "kick him in the ass" to do it.

On top of that the particular Practical Man who is most involved with Quin, Hyde, and that scientist's daughter, Trish, are a tiresome case of backlash politics-flavored generation gap between middle-aged security state functionaries and "these rotten college kids today!"--imagined as an incomprehensible and perverse pack of promiscuous, irresponsible leftists that at times crosses the line into (unintentional?) caricature.

It doesn't ruin the novel, but the book would have been a lot better off without it.