Max Barry, Lexicon ****

Lexicon is a fast-paced thriller whose science-fiction elements come from the science of linguistics. There is a group of people called poets who can identify which of 238 personality types you are and know the words to make you perfectly compliant to their will. 

The premise and plot of Lexicon are no less preposterous than those in a Dean Koontz novel, but Barry sells it for much longer.  No huge intuitive leaps that turn out to be right on target! (Longtime readers of my reviews know that Dean Koontz has many stylistic tics that drive me crazy.) Barry is especially good at writing action sequences: the long fight to capture Wil Parke is exciting and cinematic. He also makes his "scientific" ideas as plausible as possible.

I really enjoyed the first three quarters of Lexicon. I was less enamored of its end game, which introduced an extraneous super-villain when Wolfe herself would have been sufficient and more thematically fitting.