THE BURNING ROAD

This unfortunately ponderous sequel to Benson’s arresting debut thriller, The Plague Tales (1997), again offers parallel stories involving 14th-century physician Alejandro Canches and contemporary neurosurgeon Janie Crowe. As she labors (without funding) to combat an infectious disease afflicting only Jewish males, he (with the aid of a mysterious alchemist) seeks a cure for the bubonic plague decimating Europe during the Hundred Years’ War. A manuscript of Alejandro’s is the promising linking device in an otherwise overloaded (and relentlessly information-laden) tale that achieves immediacy only in its medieval chapters—and only fitfully so even there.