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BRAIN WARP

Name: BRAIN WARP
Author: Gil Snider
ISBN: 978-1-58348-472-2

by Gil Snider ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 17, 2003

An enjoyable mix of suspense and neuroscience.

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Alzheimer’s is indeed the cruelest killer in this intriguing medical potboiler.

When a rash of homeless men start showing up in the emergency room with symptoms of Alzheimer’s-like dementia that proceed to fatal heart attacks, New York neurologist Peter Branstead suspects foul play. Bums dropping dead–so what’s new? shrugs the NYPD detective he calls. But Peter, finding traces of an unknown drug in each victim, keeps poking around. More and unlikelier cases turn up: a patient of Peter’s psychotherapist girlfriend Megan; then her receptionist; then Megan herself. Peter’s investigation gets him entangled with a sinister psychiatric clinic, a conspiracy to kill the president of Ukraine and a shadowy hitman called Scorpion. Debut novelist Snider, a neurologist, deploys his medical expertise to good effect. His flair for realistic hospital procedural shines in tense ER-style action scenes–â€œSo you want to give a beta blocker to someone in V fib and no blood pressure on a hunch? You’re crazier than I thought!”–as Peter battles to keep his patients’ hearts from exploding. The medical sleuthing can get a bit arcane (â€œthe first step is demethylation into a physiologically active, 0-desmethyl derivative with an exceedingly long half-life by the 2D6 component”), but, miraculously, it all ends up making sense. Otherwise, the story is standard-issue thriller fare, with helpings of cheesy dialogue–â€œNow, Lone Eagle, feel Scorpion’s sting”–and dubious plot devices, like a poisoned chocolate cake. Still, Snider does a workmanlike job with it. He keeps the narrative moving briskly and sprinkles in piquant characters, including a merrily cynical Kievan cop and Megan’s step-brother Alan, a hustler who develops a talent for mimicking mental disorders to get himself out of jail and into the cushier accommodations of psych wards.

An enjoyable mix of suspense and neuroscience.

Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2003

ISBN: 978-1-58348-472-2

Page Count: 280

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

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Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.

After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).

Pub Date: July 1, 2002

ISBN: 0-345-45071-X

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.