A Maryland surgeon’s experimental, potentially revolutionary treatment sparks unexpectedly violent results in this novel.
Dr. Paul Laden quickly notices something peculiar about the new hit-and-run victim in the emergency room. Though the patient is alive, his heartbeat and breathing are so faint they don’t register on the hospital’s machines. Amazingly, Laden also spots a wound seemingly healing itself. Keeping mum about what he’s witnessed, the doctor wheels John Doe to his research lab at the hospital. Once he declares John dead, he can experiment on his sedated patient as much as he pleases. Laden soon determines that John’s blood can kill viruses, and his internal organs may be capable of regeneration. Without divulging specifics, so that the fame and resultant wealth will be his alone, Laden offers to pay for organ transplants for three patients residing in various states. He chooses intellectually disabled Evelyn Stroman; Tyler Carson, who has Down syndrome; and Jason Scott, who suffers from Parkinson’s. Laden is certainly hopeful but can’t quite anticipate the changes that these patients ultimately experience. What happens to them leads to a startling level of violence both within and outside the patients’ lives. Jefferson’s horror story is harsh, frightening, and frequently graphic. While the book initially centers on Laden and his experiments, the latter half shifts to the transplant recipients, primarily Evelyn. The author’s prose throughout is crisp, unflinchingly detailing scenes of rape, mutilation, and spurting blood. The majority of the characters are unsympathetic, particularly Evelyn’s appalling, callous mother, Margaret. As such, some individuals subjected to brutality won’t earn much pity from readers. This nevertheless does not allay the novel’s disconcerting tone, which courses through the entirety of the narrative. Specifics on John and his perplexing condition don’t surface until the end, though much of the plot remains unresolved by the sequel-teasing denouement.
An edgy, terrifying, and shocking tale for hardcore horror fans.Pub Date: May 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4834-8508-9
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER | SUSPENSE | THRILLER
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A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
55
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Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
An old-fashioned gumshoe yarn about Hollywood dreams and dead bodies.
Private investigator Aloysius Archer celebrates New Year’s Eve 1952 in LA with his gorgeous lady friend and aspiring actress Liberty Callahan. Screenwriter Eleanor Lamb shows up and offers to hire him because “someone might be trying to kill me.” “I’m fifty a day plus expenses,” he replies, but money’s no obstacle. Later, he sneaks into Lamb’s house and stumbles upon a body, then gets knocked out by an unseen assailant. Archer takes plenty of physical abuse in the story, but at least he doesn’t get a bullet between the eyes like the guy he trips over. A 30-year-old World War II combat veteran, Archer is a righteous and brave hero. Luck and grit keep him alive in both Vegas and the City of Angels, which is rife with gangsters and crooked cops. Not rich at all, his one luxury is the blood-red 1939 Delahaye he likes to drive with the top down. He’d bought it with his gambling winnings in Reno, and only a bullet hole in the windscreen post mars its perfection. Liberty loves Archer, but will she put up with the daily danger of losing him? Why doesn’t he get a safe job, maybe playing one of LA’s finest on the hit TV show Dragnet? Instead, he’s a tough and principled idealist who wants to make the world a better place. Either that or he’s simply a “pavement-pounding PI on a slow dance to maybe nowhere.” And if some goon doesn’t do him in sooner, his Lucky Strikes will probably do him in later. Baldacci paints a vivid picture of the not-so-distant era when everybody smoked, Joe McCarthy hunted commies, and Marilyn Monroe stirred men’s loins. The 1950s weren’t the fabled good old days, but they’re fodder for gritty crime stories of high ideals and lowlifes, of longing and disappointment, and all the trouble a PI can handle.
Well-done crime fiction. Baldacci nails the noir.Pub Date: April 19, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5387-1977-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
Categories: SUSPENSE | THRILLER | SUSPENSE | HISTORICAL THRILLER | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE
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