Preposterous plot saps Crichton novel

''Characters" and ''plot" are words perhaps too strong to describe what is going on here. The people in the story have names, but they are not characters in any reasonable sense of the word. Our reluctant hero is a lawyer named Peter Evans. One of his clients, George Morton, is a wealthy philanthropist who supports environmental causes. An institution Morton has generously financed is spinning dangerously out of control, and before he can do anything about it, his car has flipped over on the edge of a cliff, and there is a question of foul play.

This is an issue for Evans because he is a suspect, but it is the least of his problems, what with evil schemes to explode ice fields in Antarctica, flash flood a state park filled with children, and unleash a tsunami on the West Coast -- a frequent real-and-present danger, because Dirk Pitt in one of Clive Cussler's novels has had to avert it before. Not to mention the women who are vying for Evans's attention and affections -- not that anyone would want to participate in a sex scene written by Crichton, in which vixens go to bed wearing stiletto heels that leave ''dark streaks on the sheets." Nor should we neglect the dastardly attempt to poison Evans with an octopus in a plastic bag, a possibility duly substantiated by a footnote that draws attention to a scholarly paper on ''toxins and mode of envenomization of the common ringed or blue-banded octopus."

It is all utterly preposterous and extremely tiresome, especially when padded to spread over nearly 600 pages of breathless but sludgy narrative.

Surprisingly the discussions of global warming and the dangers of politicized science are far more compelling, and Crichton reveals abilities as a satirist; his digressions are far more entertaining than his story. The villains in the story are absurd, but the fools who read all the environmental articles in The New Yorker and believe themselves impeccably informed are entirely believable.