Summit

Mount Everest provides the backdrop for mountaineer Farthing's uneven first novel. In the gripping opening, Nelson Tate is determined that his 16-year-old namesake son will become the youngest person ever to climb the Seven Summits, culminating with Everest itself. The stunt proves tragically misguided when Nelson Jr. collapses near the top of Everest. Despite the boy's fragile condition, the cartoonishly evil owner of New Horizons Expeditions, Jean-Phillipe Sarron, insists that Nelson Jr. be boosted to the summit so that his "achievement" can be photographed. Head guide Neil Quinn desperately tries to get his charge back down to safety, but he fails, compromised in part by a defective oxygen supply. Blamed by Sarron for the fiasco, Quinn tries to find out the truth about the calamity. Flashbacks to 1930s Germany chart a Nazi scheme to conquer Everest as a symbol of their racial supremacy. Farthing vividly depicts the challenges of mountain-climbing but employs less than memorable characters. (June)