MINDSCREAM

by R.D. Zimmerman ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 30, 1989

Zimmerman's hard-cover debut is a medical thriller … la Robin Cook--about a plot to keep victims of apparently fatal heart attacks in comas st) that their bodies can go on manufacturing the crucial ingredient in a cure for Alzheimer's disease. Out jogging in his quiet Wisconsin town, yuppie lawyer Alex Hale stumbles on nefarious doings in the funeral home across the street from his house and is quickly silenced. But months later, Alex's young widow Nina Trenton--whose baby Jenny was born the night Alex ""died""--still has questions about his death. Encouraged by Bruce Fitzgerald, a reporter for the Mendota Gazette, Nina begins to ask questions: Why should such a healthy young man have suffered a fatal heart attack? Why are young victims of fatal coronaries invariably taken to John Morton's mortuary for interment'? She asks exactly the wrong people, too--the medical examiner Dr. Irene Volker; her giggling, voodoo-inclined assistant Marcel Dufour; and Dr. Gregory Dundeen, in charge of her Alzheimer's-stricken father--all of whom seem frantically anxious to implicate themselves. Instead of repeating the noncommittal replies they must have been rehearsing for years, Dundeen and company set fire to Nina's house, kidnap Jenny, send nosy Bruce into another coma, and chase Nina all over the landscape with knives and guns. It's not until the rousing finale--when Nina, with help from the mortician's Down's syndrome son Mikey, makes the connection between Alex's fate and Dundeen's clinic--that you can tell the difference between the quick and the dead (who finally include most of Zimmerman's principals). Agreeably scary nonsense.

Pub Date: June 30, 1989

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Donald Fine

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1989

Categories: FICTION