In John Kessel's world, time travel has given humanity a great gift: the ability to exploit an almost infinite number of alternate pasts. And exploit it they have. Sightseeing tours to the crucifixion and front row seats at Caesar's assassination are just the beginning. But nice-guy Dr. Owen Vannice just wants to bring a dinosaur named Wilma forward for study. Then he meets August and Genevieve, a father-and-daughter con artist team, and together they land in the middle of a past revolt. "Entertaining, funny, and, best of all, highly serious," according to author Connie Willis.


From Publishers Weekly
In the mid-21st century, time travel is as common as air travel is today, and so is the wholesale looting of the past for people and artifacts. The eponymous Owen Vannice, a billionaire paleontologist trying to smuggle a dinosaur from the Cretaceous period, becomes the target of Genevieve Faison, a professional confidence woman. He also becomes the focus, A.D. 40, of a Zealot uprising in Jerusalem, which has been virtually colonized by the time-travel corporations. Surviving kidnapping by terrorists and betrayal by Genevieve, Owen proceeds to marry the woman when she reappears under the name of Emma Zume. It all works out happily in the end, even for one Simon the Zealot, driven to terrorism after time-travelers steal away one Yeshu, whom he followed. The character of Simon and the portrait of a Jerusalem under time-traveling occupation are superlatively well done. Most everything else here, however, suffers from an earnestness that clashes with the urge to romp. Kessel (Good News from Outer Space) dedicates the novel to a slew of film directors (Capra, Wilder, Sturges, etc.) who mixed comedy and drama in their work. The mix here isn't nearly as magical as theirs, but the story remains intelligent and entertaining throughout. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Time-traveling con artists August and his daughter, Genevieve, find the ultimate mark in Dr. Owen Vannice, a paleontologist trying to bring a baby dinosaur into the 21st century. This humorous adventure story belongs in most sf collections.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Gerald Jonas
John Kessel's Corrupting Dr. Nice is a time-travel farce that is too clever for its own good.... Inspired by the screwball comedies of Preston Sturges, he manages to squeeze considerable humor out of the notion of a Zealot uprising armed with assault rifles and a media-saturated trial in which Abraham Lincoln and Jesus make opposing arguments.... book-length farce is a perilous venture ...


From Booklist
With all of history open to exploration and commerce, you would think that the world might become a better place--more knowledgeable, more sophisticated, generally more civilized. But Kessel's hilarious new novel, exploring not just the usual paradoxes of time travel but also the effect of yet another (yawn) world-changing new technology on a society already surfeited with wonders and marvels and only too ready to exploit six impossible things before breakfast, dashes that expectation. Starting with a badger game in an eighteenth-century luxury hotel and escalating rapidly through drop-ins on historic assassinations to smuggling weapons to zealot terrorists in New Testament^-era Jerusalem to the care and feeding of a previously (if that word has any meaning in a time-travel story) unknown dinosaur species, this yarn of a boy, a girl, the universes, and a few other assorted odd and intriguing characters caroms along like a kitten chasing a crumpled cigarette package. Dennis Winters

FROM THE PUBLISHER

August Faison and his gorgeous young daughter, Genevieve, are rogues of the first water - seasoned swindlers who rove across time in search of new victims to fleece. Now the most precious pigeon of them all has fallen into their laps, in Jerusalem at the time of Christ. Dr. Owen Vannice is too innocent, and far too rich, for his own good. A fabulously wealthy young amateur paleontologist who has just spent the last year, and billions of his parents' dollars, doing research in the Cretaceous period, he finds himself stranded in the Holy City with a rapidly growing baby dinosaur in tow. Simon is a disillusioned disciple whose master has been kidnapped uptime by colonists from the future. Now he works for the exploitive crosstime corporations, which have turned his timeline into a tourist trap, complete with luxury hotels and junkets to the Crucifixion. When a desperate act of sabotage brings them all together, their lives are drastically transformed.

FROM THE CRITICS

Kirkus Reviews

What if, Kessel (Good News from Outer Space, 1989; Meeting in Infinity, stories, 1992) wonders, time were quantized, or came in discrete instants, each separate from all others, so that each "moment universe" could be visited and changed—without affecting succeeding instants? Wealthy paleontologist Owen Vannice, researching in the Cretaceous, returns to 2063 with a baby dinosaur, Wilma, he intends to study. During a stopover in Jerusalem, a.d.40—still run by the Romans, but now with automatic weapons—he runs into grifter Genevieve Faison and her father, August. While Gen ensnares Owen, August attempts to steal Wilma. At the same time, unfortunately, Zealots—the Jewish resistance—led by former disciple Simon, are attempting to kick the Romans out by armed insurrection. Owen discovers who Gen really is and, pretending to have known all along, humiliates her. The Zealot rebellion fails. Back in the present—an age as thoroughly corrupt as the past—Gen evolves an elaborate plan to gain revenge upon Owen. Simon goes on trial and, after passionate pleas from Abraham Lincoln for the prosecution of Yeshu (Jesus) for the defense, is declared "guilty but innocent" by the robot judge.

Riotous, mordant satire, though Kessel's fascinating time- travel scenario creates as many problems as it solves: highly impressive, then, if not particularly involving.