Beyond the arcane terminology and abundant dialogue, modest characters inhabit a rock-solid medical mystery.
Scientists and federal agencies desperately try to pinpoint the source of an unknown neurological disease in Hansen’s debut medical thriller.
College professor Dr. Mark Selby reviews a patient’s symptoms on behalf of his former student, Dr. Albert Jackson. The patient, who has a history of Parkinson’s, has a current condition indicative, Jackson believes, of mad cow disease. But when doctors rule out known illnesses for other patients with similar symptoms, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Security Agency recruit experts from the college to learn more about the disease. Is it an epidemic or terrorists’ biological attack? Hansen packs the story with an abundance of medical jargon, which may initially baffle readers. For instance, with no context given, Megan of the CDC asks “Have you considered that a protease may have hydrolyzed the native proteins?” Eventually, the medical issues become clearer as theories are eliminated, but frequent debates about the unidentified sickness cause the dialogue to direct the narrative, sometimes to a confusing effect. In one instance, Mark and Al discuss a patient in a viewing room and then, with little action provided, they’re suddenly walking outside with others who have joined the conversation. Although the nature of the viral threat isn’t exactly known, some direct, tangible threats appear: an Iraqi official who may be responsible for the virus; mysterious figures keeping their eyes on doctors; and team members being abducted or assaulted. Throughout the story, lines of dialogue are rarely given new paragraphs, so the novel is filled with lengthy paragraphs consisting of dialogue among multiple characters, making it difficult to determine which character is speaking. Engrossing background stories strengthen a few characters, particularly Mark, whose sordid past includes being suspected of murder and an affair with a student at Harvard, and pathologist Sal Bonea, whose OCD as a schoolboy led teachers to believe he had a learning disability. Elsewhere, Mark’s relationship with Megan falls a bit short; it’s hard to accept his love for her while he’s having sex with Mandy, his boss’ assistant, and is noticeably infatuated with NSA agent Susie Michaels. Hansen rounds out his novel with nosy reporter Walter Pope looking for a big story and the ever-present government agents sweeping college offices for bugs as well as hygiene.
Beyond the arcane terminology and abundant dialogue, modest characters inhabit a rock-solid medical mystery.Pub Date: April 18, 2013
ISBN: 978-1470039448
Page Count: 322
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
This book and its author are cleverer than you and want you to know it.
In this mystery, the narrator constantly adds commentary on how the story is constructed.
In 1929, during the golden age of mysteries, a (real-life) writer named Ronald Knox published the “10 Commandments of Detective Fiction,” 10 rules that mystery writers should obey in order to “play fair.” When faced with his own mystery story, our narrator, an author named Ernest Cunningham who "write[s] books about how to write books," feels like he must follow these rules himself. The story seemingly begins on the night his brother Michael calls to ask him to help bury a body—and shows up with the body and a bag containing $267,000. Fast-forward three years, and Ernie’s family has gathered at a ski resort to celebrate Michael’s release from prison. The family dynamics are, to put it lightly, complicated—and that’s before a man shows up dead in the snow and Michael arrives with a coffin in a truck. When the local cop arrests Michael for the murder, things get even more complicated: There are more deaths; Michael tells a story about a coverup involving their father, who was part of a gang called the Sabers; and Ernie still has (most of) the money and isn’t sure whom to trust or what to do with it. Eventually, Ernie puts all the pieces together and gathers the (remaining) family members and various extras for the great denouement. As the plot develops, it becomes clear that there’s a pretty interesting mystery at the heart of this novel, but Stevenson’s postmodern style has Ernie constantly breaking the fourth wall to explain how the structure of his story meets the criteria for a successful detective story. Some readers are drawn to mysteries because they love the formula and logic—this one’s for them. If you like the slow, sometimes-creepy, sometimes-comforting unspooling of a good mystery, it might not be your cup of tea—though the ending, to be fair, is still something of a surprise.
This book and its author are cleverer than you and want you to know it.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-06-327902-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
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