A tense, perceptive tale of an investigation into a terrifying threat.
In Rubin’s (Eating Bull, 2015, etc.) thriller, a medical student’s friends and acquaintances become mysteriously, deathly ill—possibly due to a curse.
American Ben Oris and his Haitian best friend, Laurette, have a great time during a trip to Paris, aside from their excursion into the catacombs. There, 18th-century human bones seem to call to a dazed Ben, so he touches a femur that cuts his hand. Two weeks later, he returns to his internal-medicine clerkship in Philadelphia, despite the fact that his hand isn’t fully healed; meanwhile, Laurette has bloody visions of Ben hurting others. Then Ben’s landlady’s daughter, Kate, with whom he’s had an occasional romantic fling, shows up at the hospital with an assortment of odd symptoms. Soon, other people are sick, as well, and all have links to Ben. Laurette surmises that the illnesses are because of a curse that’s connected to the catacombs bone, and she recommends that Ben get help from some of her family members, who practice Vodou. He’s skeptical of this idea, but then Laurette’s visions correctly predict the arrival of a baby—Ben’s newborn son from a one-night stand. With no medical solution in sight, Ben realizes that he has to embrace unusual methods in order to save others, including his son, from potential danger. Rubin’s novel is a solid medical thriller with a touch of the supernatural. Her sharp prose is rife with medical jargon, but it’s always comprehensible; it’s perfectly clear, for example, that a high eosinophil (white blood cell) count is a bad thing and indicative of sickness. Ben is an appealing protagonist, but the myriad secondary characters shine too, including Laurette; Willy, Ben’s dad; and hard-edged attending physician Taka Smith, who becomes more sympathetic as the story goes on. The explanation of the curse reveals a fairly simple origin, but it’s one that allows a potent final act and a ceremony that could entail a good deal of bloodletting. The story also treats the Vodou religion respectfully; as Laurette says, it’s “not the Hollywood version of voodoo dolls and zombies.”
A tense, perceptive tale of an investigation into a terrifying threat.Pub Date: March 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-940419-97-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: ScienceThrillers Media
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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