Manhattan AIDS researchers hold off announcing the discovery of a cure for the disease until they find who is murdering their prize patients—in a medical thriller by the author of Play Dead (1990). Dr. Bruce Grey, who is supposed to be on vacation from his AIDS research clinic, slips back into New York in disguise and checks into a hotel, where he is promptly tortured and pitched from a window. The killer is a hulking sadist with a taste for Armani suits who has previously killed two of Dr. Grey's case studies on orders from someone in a group of very powerful gentlemen who, for various reasons, want to keep Dr. Grey's miraculous cure from reaching the public. The cabal includes a senator whose own son is a secret patient at the clinic; a spectacularly odious televangelist whose sermons would have to be reworked if AIDS were beaten; a villainous federal-health bureaucrat; and a physician whose cancer research keeps losing funds to the higher-profile disease. The same doctor is father to two gorgeous daughters—one a slightly crippled network news star married to an NBA star who has been diagnosed with AIDS and whom the clinic is trying to save, the other a nymphomaniac who has developed a big crush on Dr. Harvey Riker, the late Dr. Grey's partner in research. Meanwhile, closeted gay NYPD homicide detective Max Bernstein is the policeman on the beat. Lt. Bernstein enlists the help of the reporter in sorting it alt out. Time is of the essence since the basketball star has been kidnapped from the clinic and spirited to Bangkok, where there are no anti-AIDS shots. Lurid, formula medical thriller—enhanced by celebrity look-alikes, rich and famous scenery, and shadowy sex.
Pub Date: Oct. 18, 1991
ISBN: 045123491X
Page Count: 440
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1991
Once again, Coben marries his two greatest strengths—masterfully paced plotting that leads to a climactic string of...
Coben (The Stranger, 2015, etc.) hits the bull’s eye again with this taut tale of a disgraced combat veteran whose homefront life is turned upside down by an image captured by her nanny cam.
Recent widows can’t be too careful, and the day she buries the husband who was shot by a pair of muggers in Central Park, Maya Burkett installs a concealed camera in her home to keep an eye on Lily, her 2-year-old daughter, and her nanny, Isabella Mendez , while she’s out at her job as a flight instructor. She’s shocked beyond belief when she checks the footage and sees images of her murdered husband returned from the grave to her den. Confronted with the video, Isabella claims she doesn’t see anything that looks like Joe Burkett, then blasts Maya with pepper spray and takes off with the memory card. Should Maya go to the police? They were no help when her sister, Claire, was killed in a home invasion while she was deployed in the Middle East, and she doesn’t trust Roger Kierce, the NYPD homicide detective heading the investigation of Joe’s murder. Besides, Maya’s already juggling a heavy load of baggage. Whistle-blower Corey Rudzinski ended her military career when he posted footage of her ordering a defensive airstrike that killed five civilians, and she’s just waiting for him to release the audio feed that would damage her reputation even more. So after Kierce drops a bombshell—the same gun was used to shoot both Joe and Claire—Maya launches her own investigation, little knowing that it will link both murders to the death more than 10 years ago of Joe’s brother Andrew and the secrets the wealthy and powerful Burkett family has been hiding ever since.
Once again, Coben marries his two greatest strengths—masterfully paced plotting that leads to a climactic string of fireworks and the ability to root all the revelations in deeply felt emotions—in a tale guaranteed to fool even the craftiest readers a lot more than once.Pub Date: March 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-525-95509-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
One-dimensional characters but standard Cussler and Co. multidimensional action.
Cussler and Morrison open The Oregon Files and relate another action-adventure featuring Juan Cabrillo and his merry men.
Oregon looks like tramp steamer, but the rust disguises a sophisticated terrorist-fighting ship. Ever poised to save the world, Cabrillo and crew are in Venezuela to intercept weapons marked for North Korea by a rogue admiral, Dayana Ruiz, "ready to sacrifice anyone or anything." They’ll meet Ruiz again, but not before Cabrillo and crew escape attempted assassination in Jamaica, rescue the freighter Cuidad Bolívar from drone minisubs (the title piranhas) in the Caribbean, dodge C4 bombs in New York City, and survive a car-chase crashfest and shootout in Berlin. Cabrillo jets to Berlin to uncover an obscure physics paper written by a scientist killed in the 1902 eruption of Martinique’s Mount Pelée. The Einstein-plus smart, double-Ph.D. villain, Lawrence Kensit, "a mousy fellow with a stooped gait and an acne-scarred face," is always two steps ahead, having constructed a see-anything-anywhere device, Sentinel, a "neutrino telescope." The subatomic science is superficial, but Sentinel’s secreted in an impregnable Haitian cave filled with "selenium infused with copper impurities." With Haitian Hector Bazin, once an abused restavec (child servant) and former French Foreign Legionnaire, as his enforcer, Kensit plans to install a corrupt politician in the American vice presidency as his first step in taking over the U.S. and then the world. From QF-16 drones directed to knock the vice president’s 747 into the Caribbean to the Exocet and 3M-54 Klub missile shootout between Ruiz and Cabrillo, the action is supercharged, exciting enough to dress up the sci-fi plot and drown out the clank of dialogue like "you’ll discover my retribution is swift and mighty."
One-dimensional characters but standard Cussler and Co. multidimensional action.Pub Date: May 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-399-16732-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
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