by Anthony Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 24, 2024
A compelling if occasionally sedate thriller.
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In this installment of Lee’s Dr. Mark Lin Medical Thrillers series, the intrepid physician vies with a mysterious computer hacker.
As the story begins, Southern California-based, board-certified internist Dr. Mark Lin arrives for his usual shift at Anaheim’s Ivory Memorial Hospital. Lin is a hospitalist—a doctor who exclusively practices inpatient care—and he’s world-weary about the slow churn of neglectful patients he’s always dealing with (“Sometimes, that’s what my job comes down to: wiping away physical sickness within the morally sick,” he grouses. “Prolonging people’s lives just so they could go back to being a nuisance, a troublemaker, a menace to society”). Though his job can be tedious, Lin is at least grateful that the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic has passed. He and his colleagues are startled by the announcement that in-house company emails are off-limits while the hospital deals with an attack of malware. The offending program, “Lucifer’s Worm,” is crippling computer systems worldwide in a kind of “cyber pandemic” that breaches Ivory Memorial and makes Dr. Lin’s life a nightmare. Patient names and medication orders are switched and falsified as the hacker, nicknamed Doctor Lucifer, fine-tunes his attacks. The hospital’s tech support is outclassed (“the hacker has multiple ways to evade us,” they tell Dr. Lin. “We’re playing digital whack-a-mole”), and the real-world consequences soon involve Dr. Lin in violence as he battles both his own disillusionment (“Patients used to trust doctors,” he complains. “Not anymore. Now they look up medical stuff on the internet, like they want to trap us in a gotcha moment”) and his growing suspicions of one particular colleague.
Lee knowledgeably and very effectively builds up the background tension of his novel, which stems from the frightening extent to which the mechanisms of health care—including medical records, medication orders, and treatment protocols—have become digitized and therefore vulnerable to the kind of cyber-attacks carried out by Doctor Lucifer. Dr. Lin is a dour but involving protagonist; Lee makes him more than sufficiently flawed to elicit readers’ empathy. The specter of Covid-19 (both the stress of the pandemic itself and the lingering bitterness some characters still feel over the government’s management of stimulus checks) is an intriguing element that makes an unexpected return in the narrative as the crisis’ long-term effects on Lin become more and more obvious. (“Covid-19 had kept everyone on their toes, turning healthcare workers like me into mindless drones,” he thinks. “The whole time, I never bothered to deprogram and destress.”) Lin’s eventual centrality to the plot is a bit unlikely, and the book’s pacing is often too sluggish for a narrative with the trappings of a medical thriller. Still, the drama of Lin’s personal redemption is unfailingly involving. “Redemption can occur even with the worst people,” he’s told at one point without believing it. But as the tempo of the story increases, he comes closer and closer to thinking that “perhaps there is such a thing as treatment for disease of humanity.”
A compelling if occasionally sedate thriller.Pub Date: May 24, 2024
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 315
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Karin Slaughter ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 29, 2015
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...
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Twenty-four years after a traumatic disappearance tore a Georgia family apart, Slaughter’s scorching stand-alone picks them up and shreds them all over again.
The Carrolls have never been the same since 19-year-old Julia vanished. After years of fruitlessly pestering the police, her veterinarian father, Sam, killed himself; her librarian mother, Helen, still keeps the girl's bedroom untouched, just in case. Julia’s sisters have been equally scarred. Lydia Delgado has sold herself for drugs countless times, though she’s been clean for years now; Claire Scott has just been paroled after knee-capping her tennis partner for a thoughtless remark. The evening that Claire’s ankle bracelet comes off, her architect husband, Paul, is callously murdered before her eyes and, without a moment's letup, she stumbles on a mountainous cache of snuff porn. Paul’s business partner, Adam Quinn, demands information from Claire and threatens her with dire consequences if she doesn’t deliver. The Dunwoody police prove as ineffectual as ever. FBI agent Fred Nolan is more suavely menacing than helpful. So Lydia and Claire, who’ve grown so far apart that they’re virtual strangers, are unwillingly thrown back on each other for help. Once she’s plunged you into this maelstrom, Slaughter shreds your own nerves along with those of the sisters, not simply by a parade of gruesome revelations—though she supplies them in abundance—but by peeling back layer after layer from beloved family members Claire and Lydia thought they knew. The results are harrowing.
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that she makes most of her high-wire competition look pallid, formulaic, or just plain fake.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-242905-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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by Colleen Hoover ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 8, 2020
A unique story of transcendent love.
An aimless young musician meets the girl of his dreams only to have his newfound happiness threatened by several inexplicable—and possibly supernatural—events.
The story opens as Leeds Gabriel meets with a detective while his girlfriend, Layla, is restrained in a room one flight above them. Through the interview, readers learn that Leeds was wasting both his time and his musical talent playing backup for a small-town wedding troupe called Garrett’s Band when he spied Layla dancing her heart out to their mediocre music at a wedding. When Leeds approaches Layla, their connection is both instant and intense. A blissful courtship follows, but then Leeds makes the mistake of posting a picture of himself with Layla on social media. A former girlfriend–turned-stalker wastes no time in finding and attacking Layla. Layla spends months recovering in a hospital, and it seems the girl Leeds fell for might be forever changed. Gone is her special spark, her quirkiness, and the connection that had entranced Leeds months before. In a last-ditch effort to save their relationship, he brings Layla back to the bed-and-breakfast where they first met. When they get there, though, Leeds meets Willow, another guest, and finds himself drawn to her in spite of himself. As events unfold, it becomes clear that Willow will either be the key to saving Leeds’ relationship with Layla or the catalyst that finally extinguishes the last shreds of their epic romance. Told entirely from Leeds’ point of view, the author’s first foray into paranormal romance does not disappoint. Peppered with elements of mystery, psychological thriller, and contemporary romance, the novel explores questions about how quickly true love can develop, as well as the conflicts that can imperil even the strongest connections. Despite a limited cast of characters and very few setting changes, the narrative manages to remain both fast-paced and engaging. The conclusion leaves a few too many loose ends, but the chemistry between the characters and unexpected twists throughout make for a satisfying read.
A unique story of transcendent love.Pub Date: Dec. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5420-0017-8
Page Count: 301
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
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